New England Center for Hearing Rehabilitation (NECHEAR) is an independent, family friendly, rehabilitation agency established to provide a full range of audiological and rehabilitation services to individuals with hearing impairment from infants to the elderly. We are commited to early identification and intensive intervention for infants identified through newborn hearing screening. Within this framework, NECHEAR specializes in determining cochlear implant candidacy and providing intensive cochlear implant therapy for young children, as well as pre-lingual and post-lingual adults. NECHEAR is divided into two separate service areas – Aural Habilitation and Audiology-- which are highly dependent on each other. Our rehabilitation team provides comprehensive audiology services, including hearing testing, hearing aid fitting/validation, cochlear implant programming, educational audiology (at schools), FM selection and support, and school inservice training. Aural rehabilitation therapy is provided using auditory-verbal techniques to facilitate the acquisition of spoken language. Adult services include hearing aid fitting/validation, cochlear implant candidacy evaluation, counseling, and therapy. Educational outreach is also provided to families, schools, and professionals to increase the awareness and understanding of a wide range of hearing technology. This includes educational consults, school observations, and educationally oriented communication evaluations. This allows the school team to effectively manage the unique needs of students with hearing impairment in the mainstream setting.
