The Ewing Foundation was involved in the development of both the Service Audit Tool and the Monitoring Protocol for Deaf Babies through our Educational Consultant, Sue Lewis, who led on both initiatives. Both tools are now published and in use within Pathfinder sites and have been adopted as part of the of the evaluation protocols for both the Modernising Children's Hearing Services (MCHAS) and Newborn Screening Projects.

The Ewing Foundation was pleased to be involved in the production of the RNID publication 'Inclusion Strategies: supporting effective inclusion and attainment'.  This resource focuses on the needs of the individual professional entering the inclusive classroom.  It is a practical and flexible tool with exemplars and suggestions to improve knowledge, skills and confidence.  Aimed primarily at trainee teachers and their tutors it has useful application for anyone facing the challenge of effective inclusion at all phases of education.

At the request of an educational audiologist, we visited a very recently built school because the audiologist felt the school exhibited unacceptable reverberation times.  Three frequency average reverberation times (R.T.) were measured with a reverberation meter over 5 classroom positions resulting in a figure of 0.7 seconds.  The school agreed that some acoustic treatment was necessary and an acoustic tiled suspended ceiling was installed.  On a follow up visit the perceived improvement was obvious and a measured average R.T. of 0.32 was recorded.  It was deemed so successful that the school has started a rolling program to have several more classrooms treated.

Specific training is offered to colleagues as part of their continuing professional development (CDP).  The Assessment of Comprehension and Expression is a language assessment tool for children aged 6-11 years.  This was introduced during a day's training with a team of teachers of the deaf to see if it would be an appropriate resource for their Service.  The day included: video of deaf child to see the assessment in use, hands on sections of the assessment, opportunities to analyse a transcript and follow the scoring rationale and open discussion of pros and cons.  In this way quality time was devoted to the task and specific skills were developed in addition to decisions about the appropriateness of the materials for the team.