Belinda Leksas, Head of Marketing & External Relations at Telethon Speech and Hearing, came along to tell us all about TSH and how it operates. Their objective is to empower children to hear, communicate, connect, and learn in partnership with the children’s families, thus resulting in stronger and more confident communities. It all started in the 1960s when Terry and Audrey Crommelin noticed that their youngest child Jenny was not responding to normal stimuli, and her deafness caused her parents and some other families to establish the Speech & Hearing Centre (now known as TSH). Belinda outlined some of the specific services such as Chatterbox, which is an Early Intervention Hearing Loss Program that provides families with the knowledge, skills and support to meet the needs of their child during the first five years of life; the Talkabout Program which combines highly specialised education and specialist health services to help develop speech and language skills through repeated opportunities to experience, explore and discover concepts vital for effective speech and learning. The Talkabout Team includes educators and therapists, audiologists and a family liaison officer; and the Outpost Program which provides relevant support at ten mainstream partner schools – again using a multi-disciplinary team of experts. It is interesting to note that the founding Principal of what is now TSH was the late Marie Kormendy, a former Member of our Club and more recently of the Mount Lawley Club. Both Rotary Clubs have been involved with the East Java Hearing Project in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Surabaya for a number of years, and this has meant an ongoing connection with TSH during that time.Belinda Leksas, Head of Marketing & External Relations at Telethon Speech and Hearing, came along to tell us all about TSH and how it operates. Their objective is to empower children to hear, communicate, connect, and learn in partnership with the children’s families, thus resulting in stronger and more confident communities. It all started in the 1960s when Terry and Audrey Crommelin noticed that their youngest child Jenny was not responding to normal stimuli, and her deafness caused her parents and some other families to establish the Speech & Hearing Centre (now known as TSH). Belinda outlined some of the specific services such as Chatterbox, which is an Early Intervention Hearing Loss Program that provides families with the knowledge, skills and support to meet the needs of their child during the first five years of life; the Talkabout Program which combines highly specialised education and specialist health services to help develop speech and language skills through repeated opportunities to experience, explore and discover concepts vital for effective speech and learning. The Talkabout Team includes educators and therapists, audiologists and a family liaison officer; and the Outpost Program which provides relevant support at ten mainstream partner schools – again using a multi-disciplinary team of experts. It is interesting to note that the founding Principal of what is now TSH was the late Marie Kormendy, a former Member of our Club and more recently of the Mount Lawley Club. Both Rotary Clubs have been involved with the East Java Hearing Project in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Surabaya for a number of years, and this has meant an ongoing connection with TSH during that time.