Latest News 01 May 2013: First Voice releases 2012 annual report It has been a busy and an enormously gratifying year for First Voice and the annual report provides an informative update of our many projects and activities over the past year to improve the lives of young hearing impaired children throughout the region. Read the full announcement. 16 October 2012: New First Voice Chair Appointed First Voice is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr Jim Hungerford as its new Board Chair. Mr Hungerford takes over from Associate Professor Dimity Dornan AM, who has held the position for the past 18 months. Mr Hungerford is the Chief Executive Officer of The Shepherd Centre, an early intervention centre based in Sydney which has outreach centres in metropolitan Sydney and Canberra. He brings more than 30 years' experience in health sciences and senior management to the position of First Voice Chair. Read the full announcement. 17 May 2012: First Voice centres selected to deliver national rural and regional hearing program First Voice centres and Vision Australia have been selected by the Australian Government to deliver remote hearing and vision services to children in rural and remote areas under a new $4.1M government telehealth program. Specialist services will be delivered to hearing and/or vision impaired Australians aged 0 to 18 years via video conferencing using laptops and iPads. 31 January 2012: First Voice releases annual report First Voice has released its annual report on its first year as the national voice for listening and spoken language member organisations. First Voice has exerted a high level of influence in its first year of operation, and continues to demonstrate thought, policy, research and clinical leadership on all matters related to early childhood deafness.

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About First Voice

Formation of The Alliance for Deaf Children

The Alliance for Deaf Children (Alliance) was formed in 2003. Known as “the Six Centre Alliance”, the entity was represented by six centres in Australia and New Zealand:

Hear and Say Centre, Queensland
Taralye, Victoria
Telethon Speech and Hearing, Western Australia
The Cora Barclay Centre, South Australia
The Shepherd Centre, New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory
The Hearing House, New Zealand

The Alliance was formed so that member organisations could easily share information, collaborate on challenges, lobby and conduct national fundraising activities. In 2004 the centres formalised the Alliance through a Memorandum of Understanding which defined its membership criteria and addressed issues relating to long term commitment, cooperation and collaboration.

The need for a new entity

The Alliance has operated successfully as an informal, collaborative group of member organisation representing the needs of hearing impaired children in Australia and New Zealand since 2003. However funding and the ongoing viability of member organisations began to emerge as increasingly important issues within the sector. Therefore greater urgency and formality was needed to shape public policy and funding decision making related to hearing impaired children.

As a consequence, a more formalised entity, known as First Voice, was established to lead and advocate for world-class early intervention services for children who are deaf or hearing impaired.

First Voice was launched

First Voice was officially launched by its Patron, Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, at Admiralty House in Sydney on 7 October 2010.
Link to the Governor-General’s speech

Link to photo’s from the launch event