Teletherapy Services for Children with Hearing Devices: The Malaysian Parents Experience

Abstract

This study aimed to examine parents’ perspectives on the implementation of teletherapy for deaf children with hearing devices. Teletherapy is a new method in Malaysia and has not yet been widely introduced to the community. There are still many individuals especially from the deaf community who need the services of a therapist, yet the lack of pathologists and therapists prevents this community from getting therapy. The problem is rotation system for the services of a therapist also takes a long-time causing child with hearing impairment to lag in terms of language and cognitive development and does not show significant results due to the relatively long time to get the next therapy session. The busyness of parents and the high cost of therapy are examples of factors that cause low access to the therapy. The use of teletherapy methods can help improve the access for deaf children with hearing device to therapy. This study has two main objectives which is to examine the factors that influence the readiness of parents and the suitability of the implementation of teletherapy in Malaysia based on the experience of the study respondents. Participants in this study are parents of children who are still or have received teletherapy treatment in an organization that provides support to the community with hearing impairment that known as Hear Me. This study showed that most parents in this study agreed that teletherapy was appropriate and potentially to be featured.