Download Newsletter Dec 2011 - Cambridgeshire Hearing Help

Newsletter
Issue 140
December 2011
Dear all,
Inside this issue:
Page 2 A word from our
Chairman
Page 3 Volunteer news
Pioneering hearing
aid research
Interview with the
Master of Peterhouse
Page 4 Photos from the
Annual Lunch
Page 5 Christmas entertain
ment
Christmas quiz
Page 6 Subtitle bloopers
Answers to quiz
Dates for your diary
PAGE 1
Christmas is coming and the
news is that we expect to have
a cold one. It is hard to
believe, as we are told this is
likely to be the warmest
November on record, but the
weather could turn very cold
very suddenly. Our volunteers
are hardy but don’t overdo it
in the bad weather and make
sure, if you haven’t already
had one, to get your flu jab.
Some of the rooms we work in
are very well heated and one
of the times when we are
most vulnerable is when we
move rapidly from hot to cold.
The UK has no lower records
of hypothermia than much
colder countries, and it is believed this is because we don’t
protect ourselves properly
against the cold when we go
outside. I recently went to a
discussion about keeping
warm in winter and we all
agreed that the value of hats
and warm clothing is underestimated, so you will be seeing
me wearing a hat through
most of the winter, and please
wrap up yourselves. Annoyingly, hats designed to cover
the ears make my hearing aids
whistle. Fashion, warmth and
hearing are sometimes at
odds.
The Cambridgeshire
Celebrates Age Day at
Millbrook House in Soham
was well attended, so thanks
to the Barbara Driver, Janet
Pettit and Alan Jones who
helped with the stall. For
those of you who have not
visited Millbrook House, it is a
state of the art facility for
older people and even includes a gym. We made some
useful contacts and were able
to demonstrate our hearing
help service and our deaf
awareness DVD.
In September we held an
Equipment Demonstration in
St Ives and by the time you
get this we will have completed our final one of the
year at Scostdales Garden
centre in Shelford. The St
Ives demonstration went well
with nearly 30 “customers”
and we hope for a similar success at Scotsdales. Barbara
and Chris Seekings are helping
out Fenland CAMTAD with the
Doddington equipment clinic
in December. We are reviewing the year’s programme and
planning for next year, perhaps varying the format
from time to time, so
please make suggestions
for improvements. We will
also have a presentation by
Sarabec on the latest
equipment on 16th February and all are welcome to
come. (See “Dates for your
diary”.) Anyone who would
like to join the equipment
group should give me or
Melanie their details and
we will put you on the mailing list and invite you to the
regular training sessions.
We have purchased two
new pieces of equipment
for demonstration, the first
is the CM1 wireless personal listener obtained
from Sarabec. This is one
of the cheapest in the wireless range (although still
costly!) but I have tried it
out and found that it has a
good quality sound. The
second is a room loop with
remote control to adjust
the volume and tone. This
makes it much easier for
the user to finesse the
quality of sound, but the
downside of course is yet
Cambridge Campaign for Tackling Acquired Deafness, 8a Romsey Terrace, Cambridge CB1 3NH
Telephone 01223 416141 Fax 01223 245800 www.camtadcambs.org.uk email [email protected]
Registered charity No 27815
another remote to lose or
confuse with others. Both
these items can be viewed at
the office by appointment or
at the drop in equipment
demonstrations but we cannot lend them at present.
The Annual lunch took place
on 21st November and we
were again well served by the
students at Cambridge
Regional College. Sadly we
were not joined by the Hard
of Hearing Club this year. You
can see the photographs on
page 4. The
raffle raised £41.
New volunteer training in
Cambridge will be finished by
the end of the month and the
trainees will be ready to start
in the sessions. I was very
pleased to connect up with
the County Council Workforce
Development Team who were
able to deliver the training for
us on good practice on Infec-
tion Control. But this had an
added benefit. Through that
contact I was asked if I could
help design the course for
care assistants and managers,
on hearing loss and the use
of hearing aids, by training
the trainers who deliver the
course. At present they have
a section on vision in their
training but nothing on hearing loss. This will potentially
have a very significant impact
on the quality of care across
the county, much greater
than we can achieve by talking to individual groups of
carers or staff.
You may have noticed that
Fran is very busy supervising
all the hearing help sessions
at the moment. We are going to recruit a new session
supervisor to assist her but in
the meantime please help
her out as much as you can. I
am very grateful to the volun-
teers who are putting in extra
time to support the sessions.
The advertisement for the
new post will be in the press
and on the website shortly.
Everyone has worked incredibly hard in 2011. The changes
brought about by the new
audiology service have been
extremely challenging for us
to accommodate and our volunteers have brought commonsense and good humour
to make it as easy as possible.
The receptionists have had a
tough time and I am especially
grateful to them for sticking
with us and upgrading our
record keeping to the new
standards required. I’m hoping for a more tranquil 2012
for CAMTAD.
Happy Christmas and enjoy a
lovely holiday.
Frances
A word from our Chairman
As your new Chairman I
would like to send a brief
message to you all. I was fortunate to be a founder member of CAMTAD with Dorothy
Parry, Christopher South of
the Cambridge Evening News
and John Mellaney, the Secretary of the United Cambridge
Hospitals. Dorothy’s passion
for deaf awareness and her
determination to make a difference made a lasting impression upon me. She was an
PAGE 2
inspiration! I feel very proud
to be your Chairman now,
although I am getting a little
long in the tooth as Stephen
Webster kindly put it. I won’t
be able to match his long
service to CAMTAD, but I will
be very happy to steer the
ship while we consolidate our
position in the new Cambridgeshire Adult Hearing
Service and in Huntingdon,
and offer Fenland CAMTAD
whatever support they
wish. There are also other
exciting opportunities for
us to pursue. We have a
proud history, an excellent
staff team and all of you.
Without you CAMTAD is
nothing. Thank you for all
your hard work. I wish you a
relaxing and enjoyable
Christmas.
Alan Jones
Vo l u n t e e r N e w s
We are very sad to report
that Maggie Highwood died
suddenly on 17th November.
Maggie had been a committed and loyal volunteer at a
number of different hearing
help sessions and will be
greatly missed by all her knew
her. Our deepest sympathy
and thoughts are with her
family.
Cornie Thorne has retired
after 11 years of stalwart
service as a CAMTAD volunteer. Our thanks to him for all
his work as a volunteer and
best wishes for his retirement.
Ian Callaghan has left
CAMTAD to move back to
Oxford. We wish him all the
best for the future and thank
him for all he has contributed
as a volunteer.
Pioneering hearing aid research
A Cambridge university
research project, funded by
Action on Hearing Loss, is
looking at new ways to
improve hearing aids for people with severe hearing loss.
The pioneering project is
investigating the effectiveness of hearing aids that help
people with severe, highfrequency hearing loss. Many
of these people simply
cannot hear sounds (like ’t’
and ’k’) that are important
for understanding speech,
even when the sounds are
amplified by a hearing aid.
These sounds can be made
audible if their frequencies
are lowered. The team aims
to compare the effectiveness
of different methods for implementing frequency lowering in hearing aids.
The project was recently
visited by Cambirdge MP Dr
Julian Huppert who said “I’m
delighted to see this valuable research being carried
out. It demonstrates Action
on Hearing Loss’s tremendous dedication to improving the lives of people with
hearing loss”.
Reproduced from an article
in Action on Hearing Loss
Magazine, Oct/Nov 2011
Interview with the Master of Peterhouse
In the latest edition of Action
on Hearing Loss Magazine,
Professor Adrian Dixon
(currently Master of Peterhhouse College Cambridge,
and NHS Consultant Radiologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital) talks about his hearing
loss. Here are some extracts
from the interview:
“ I have fairly severe lateonset familial deafness. My
father and grandmother
were even deafer than I am
now. Thus, as a family we
are all used to it!”
“It is ridiculous not to own
up to a hearing loss and one
should get advice early. Both
my sister and I were taught
lipreading when young, but I
am not that good at it. Facial
expressions count for a lot.
The ‘stiff upper lip’ can cause
a problem!”
“My hearing loss makes some
students shyer than they
would otherwise be, but they
rapidly get to know my ways
and speak up. Answering
questions at conferences can
be problematic—the amplification is often directed at the
audience and not the people
sitting on stage! I always ask
for an interpreter—to allow
me more time to compose
my answers! For students
with hearing loss, most lecturers now have to prepare
detailed handouts. Quite a
few of our lecture theatres
now have loop systems, but
this supposes that the lecturer is happy to be ‘wired
up’ and does not stray too
far from the microphone–
not always a given! At our
college we are mainly involved with small group
(supervision) teaching so this
is less of a problem”
Extracts reproduced from an
interview by Alice Lagnardo,
Action on Hearing Loss
Magazine Nov/Dec 2011
PAGE 3
Photos from the Annual Lunch, 21st November 2011
PAGE 4
Christmas entertainment
hearing. Bookings can be
made online via the Corn
Exchange website
http://www.cornex.co.uk/
The Cambridge Corn Exchange have announced a
special interpreted performance of their 2011 Christmas
Show, Annie, starring Sue
Pollard. The performance,
on 28 December 2011 at
7pm, will include "live" British Sign Language signing for
the deaf and hard-of-
by phone on (01223)
357851 or via the text relay
service ‘Typetalk’: 0800
515152
Meanwhile local cinamas are
now starting to offer subtitled performances of certain
films. Full details are available via a national website
www.yourlocalcinema.com
Currently only a small number of subtitled screenings
are available—Cambridge
Cineworld are showing
‘Dream House’ and Twilight
Saga: Breaking Dawn. Cambridge Vue are also showing Twilight Saga, plus
Happy Feet 2. However, the
website offers an email
service to be notified when
new shows are added, and
its organisers are involved
in trying to persuade local
cinemas to provide more
subtitled screenings.
Christmas quiz - sound and hearing
1. Which of the following is not one of the three smallest bones in the ear?
A) Anvil
B) Hammer
C) Bridle
D) Stirrup
C) Breathe
D) See
2. Your semi-circular canals help you do what?
A) Hear
B) Maintain balance
3. Which animal has the smallest frequency range of hearing?
A)
Human
B) Dolphin
C) Bat
D) Cat
4. Sound is a form of energy. True or false?
5. The bones in the inner ear are the smallest bones in your body. Together they are
smaller than an orange seed. True or false?
6. What is the volume of a normal conversation in decibels (dB) ?
A)
150dB
B) 60 dB
c)10 dB
D) 1000 dB
C) 100 dB
D)10,000 dB
7. What is the volume of a typical rock concert?
A)
80dB
B) 1000 dB
Answers on page 6
PAGE 5
Subtitle bloopers
We all know how important
the subtitling of TV programmes is for people with a
hearing impairment, and it
can be annoying when there
are mistakes. However, some
of these ‘bloopers’ can be
very amusing, and there have
recently been some funny
examples published in the
Radio Times and on the Web.
So, as a bit of seasonal light
relief, here are some of the
best ones spotted recently.
Reproduced from Radio Times
1-7 Oct and 8-14 Oct, and the
BBC website.
“And with us now, Bethany Hughes” became “and with a snout,
Bettany Hughes”;
Residents of the Midlands were surprised to see “a cluster of
Sharons” approaching, rather than showers;
On Strictly Come Dancing, contestants were appropriately described as having been “in the tans off” (dance-off) and “doing
the frocks trot”
Other examples include:
“Pasta dough blade” (Paso doble)
“Open, yum!” (Opium)
“the foetus” (Theo Paphitis)
“toy hauteur” (Toyota)
“canning a roux” (kangaroo)
“Back the barman” and “back the bomber” (Barack Obama)
Answers to Christmas quiz
1.
C) Bridle (The hammer, anvil and stirrup are the three bones in the inner ear which transfer
vibrations from the eardrum to the cochlea)
2.
B) The semi-circular canals are three loops of fluid-filled tubes that are attached to the
cochlea, and help us maintain our sense of balance.
3.
A) Human. The average human hearing range is 20-20,000 Hz. A dolphin’s is 200-150,000
Hz; a bat’s
is 20-120,000 Hz; a cat’s is 00-60,000 Hz
4.
True
5.
True
6.
B) 60dB
7.
C) 100 dB (though volumes as high as 120-140 dB have been reported, which is dangerously loud).
Dates for your diary
16th February, 9.30-12.30
Equipment demonstration from Sarabec
- all welcome
CDA, 8 Romsey Terrace (next door to CAMTAD)
26th January and the last Thursday
of every month (except December
and August)
Hard of Hearing Club meetings, open to all
Buchan Street Neighbourhood Centre
off Kings Hedges Road, Cambridge