Deaf student midwife from Stamford challenges perceptions in Deaf Awareness Week

A midwifery student is challenging perceptions of what deaf people can achieve.

Twenty-year-old Beatrice Cadman, known as Bea, has never let anything stop her achieving her goals and is continuing on a campaign this Deaf Awareness Week, which runs until Sunday (May 12).

Bea, who is from Stamford, was diagnosed as profoundly deaf as a baby, with her parents told she would barely be able to hear a jet engine next to her.

After attending an auditory verbal therapy programme she graduated with age-appropriate spoken language and attended mainstream school before starting at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, where she is studying to become a midwife.

Bea said: “Auditory verbal therapy not only enabled me to learn to listen and talk and attend

mainstream education but also encouraged both me and my family to have high aspirations and believe I could achieve the same things as my hearing friends.

“I have always wanted to be a midwife and it is thanks to having auditory verbal therapy when I was younger that I am now following my passion and delivering babies.

“But it is disappointing to hear that many people still don’t know what is possible for deaf children and young people.”

New research by charity Auditory Verbal UK has revealed a lack of awareness of what deaf children can achieve, with 29% of adults in the East of England believing it is not possible for a child born profoundly deaf to learn to speak as well as a child without hearing loss.

The charity is calling for the Government to support and invest in auditory verbal therapy so every family with a deaf child has the option to access it through publicly funded services in their local area.

With early support through auditory verbal therapy, deaf children can learn to speak like their hearing peers.