Radio Interview: Supporting the employment of the deaf & hard of hearing
Beginnings SC Director of Programs Mary Reaves speaks with Mike Switzer of SC Business Review
Jennifer Faulkner • 07/14/22
Director of Programs Mary Reaves was interviewed by Mike Switzer of SC Business Review and SC Public Radio on July 13, 2022.
You can listen to the interview here and read the full transcript below.
TRANSCRIPT:
Mike Switzer:
Hello and welcome to another edition of the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. It probably would not surprise you to learn that people who are deaf or hard of hearing have lower rates of college level education, which means lower paying jobs and higher rates of unemployment in most cases. Which is why our next guest organization is working to alleviate this situation. Mary Reaves is the director of programs at Beginnings SC, and she joined us now by phone from her office in West Columbia, South Carolina. Mary, welcome to the program.
Mary Reaves:
Thank you for having me, Mike, I appreciate it.
Mike Switzer:
Now first, give us a brief history and overview of your organization.
Mary Reaves:
Well, we're about to come up on our 10th birthday, actually. And my co-founder and I started this program to educate and support parents who have a deaf or hard of hearing child. I worked for the Department of Mental Health for a number of years and I served many adults and children whose lives had been really significantly impacted by lack of access to language and information. My co-founder was a teacher of the deaf and she really saw that happening before her students even graduated from high school, just lack of language. We met frequently to talk about what else we could do. And a nonprofit was born that shifted our focus from educating children and counseling children to really supporting parents.
Mary Reaves:
And we've had the opportunity to serve over 400 families all across South Carolina who have a deaf or hard of hearing child, we're statewide, anywhere from birth to age 21. I'll tell you, one of the most exciting parts about the journey that this past 10 years has been is the relationships that we've established with businesses, and partners, and organizations all across the state. And we really spent the early part of our career focusing on really the micro aspects of a child and family like, what does this one family need? And we've since really come to realize that we have to take a macro view because the lack of access to language and communication impacts our entire community.
Mike Switzer:
Tell us what the causes are here of lower rates of college education among the deaf and hard of hearing. And why is that?
Mary Reaves:
Well, a lot of that really kind of boils down to there has for a long time been a lack of identification. About 8% of children in South Carolina who have a permanent hearing loss or deaf or hard of hearing, only about 8% of those have an individualized education plan, which means they're really getting direct instruction. We're identifying what their needs are. So, when we have children who are showing up to school, they might have arrived at school with a delay in language already. Maybe their parents didn't have supports and services or they lived in a very rural area. That's a significant barrier for a number of families, lack of providers.
Mary Reaves:
But then, we get children who go into schools and this has always been considered a low incidence disability. We at Beginnings love to call it low counting because really there are 9,232 kids in South Carolina alone, school age, to six to 18, who are not getting appropriate services. And so, when you leave high school with potentially a fourth grade reading level, which is a national statistic but is still common, college is often not accessible.
Mike Switzer:
And so, you're finding the solution to this issue is to provide more resources to the parents?
Mary Reaves:
Absolutely, absolutely. When parents are given information about all the ways that their child can be successful, that having a hearing loss doesn't mean their child can't achieve, but they need supports, they need services, they need quality intervention, they need appropriate services in the school, and they need to be embraced by their community.
Mike Switzer:
All right. Now, tell us how your organization is working with the business community.
Mary Reaves:
We have been really excited about a partnership with Dominion Energy. And they have a group of folks, all Dominion Energy employees, it's called DiverseAbility, and they're really working to expand the talent pool of folks who come to work at Dominion. And so, we've been really excited about opportunities to partner with them, to share information about how to reach the deaf and hard of hearing community. But then also, they have shared a way that they can help us serve our families, using some of the tools and resources that they have like how to write a resume. And we've all been in Zoom land for so long. My children, because they have typical hearing, overhear me having a business meeting. They hear the language that happens from that.
Mary Reaves:
Children who have a hearing loss often don't, most often don't. And so, they don't have this incidental knowledge of what a business meeting looks like for example. And so, the folks in DiverseAbility with Dominion Energy are going to help us educate our parents on that. What topics do we need to make sure that we're hitting? And that's not something that we have found in the myriad resources available for families. And then we have a number of partners across the state that have allowed us, for example, to screen 7,000 children for hearing loss in South Carolina, and that's just been really huge.
Mike Switzer:
Well, Mary, thank you so much for what you are doing and for spending time with us today.
Mary Reaves:
Thank you so much for having me, Mike. I really appreciate it.
Mike Switzer:
Mary Reaves is the director of programs at Beginnings SC. She joined us by phone from her office in West Columbia, South Carolina. We will have a link to the organization posted at our webpage so you can learn more, southcarolinapublicradio.org, where you can also hear this show again and you can find us wherever you find your podcasts. With the South Carolina Business Review, this is Mike Switzer.
Speaker 3:
The views expressed on the South Carolina Business Review do not necessarily reflect those of South Carolina Public Radio.