A BUS that provides support for people who are deaf visited the Isle of Man for the first time yesterday (Wednesday).
The Listening Bus is run by the National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS) and came to the Island as part of the NDCS North West roadshow.
It spent the day parked outside the Post Office on Regent Street in Douglas and offered advice to deaf children, their families and professionals working with them.
Damian Ball is the roadshow co-ordinator and travels all over the UK with the bus. He said: "The main aim is to provide information to parents and professionals who want to learn more and to educate them about the work that the NDCS does. It doesn't matter about the person's level of deafness. The idea is to get all the information in one place."
As well as giving out information the Listening Bus also carries a wide range of equipment which has been designed to give hearing impaired children and young people more independence.
Damian continued: "We have different equipment that can help children (and adults) to wake up, answer the front door and talk on the telephone. We do meet quite a lot of people that don't know about the equipment available."
There are five areas of equipment that the Listening Bus focuses on including pager systems to alert a person to different sounds including the fire alarm, doorbell and telephone and alarm clocks which vibrate in order to wake the person up. There is also door alerting devices, telephones and audio devices to help make life easier for deaf people.
Damian said he thinks it is important that the bus has come to the Isle of Man. He continued: "It's all about raising awareness and we visit small communities where people might be 'the only deaf in the village!' We can tailor the information to them and then they can take it away. We will hopefully come back next year to keep raising awareness."
There are approximately 40 children in the Island with permanent hearing impairment who have implants, hearing aids or who are being monitored.
The Listening Bus was brought to the Island by the Department of Health's Children's Hearing Services Working Group.
For more information on the Listening Bus visit www.ndcs.org.uk.
