Our services
Our services
SoundSkills specialises in helping children and adults with communication and/or learning difficulties associated with auditory processing problems. We are unique in having a multidisciplinary team of audiologists, education advisers, a speech language therapist, and an autism adviser. Many of our child clients also have other developmental difficulties. Our services include diagnosis, treatment, management, advice to schools, and referral to other services when needed.
Audiologists
Audiologists
Our audiologists specialise in assessment and management of auditory processing disorders in children and adults. Many of our clients have other conditions such as head injury, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or dyslexia. Our audiologists provide the following services:
- assessment and diagnosis of auditory processing difficulties/disorders
- assessment of hearing and listening problems associated with other conditions such as autism
- preparation of management plans
- auditory training
- amplification including Remote Microphone Hearing Aid systems and hearing aids with remote microphones
- referral to other services if needed.
Our audiologists are available for phone consultations if required.
Education Advisers
Education Advisers
Our Education Advisers specialise primarily in supporting students with auditory processing disorder (APD) in the classroom. Our Education Advisers work alongside students, parents and caregivers, Learning Support Coordinators, Special Education Needs Coordinators, and teachers to provide:
- information on what APD is and how it affects the learner
- guidance on amplification systems for students with APD, including remote microphone hearing aid (RMHA) systems, and hearing aids with accessory remote microphones
- advice and guidance on the use and management of amplification systems for APD
- RMHA funding advice
- information on strategies to support students with APD
- facilitation of privately funded trials of amplification systems.
- development of trial plans including individualised trial goals that are used to measure the effectiveness of amplification systems in assisting students
- ongoing support for students using amplification systems for APD in the classroom, such as meeting with parents/caregivers and school staff, conducting classroom observations and being available for ‘trouble-shooting’.
Speech Language Therapist - Consultant
Speech Language Therapist - Consultant
Our Speech-Language Therapist (SLT) specialises in working alongside children with language and literacy difficulties associated with auditory processing disorder (APD). She can complete an speech-language assessment and provide guidance for a specialised intervention programme to enhance student's ability to understand and express ideas in all modes of communication.
Our Speech-Language Therapist can provide an assessment in the following areas:
- dyslexia/literacy difficulties
- phonological awareness
- language difficulties associated with APD
- sound discrimination difficulties
- speech sound disorders in older children.
Specialist Adviser and Researcher
Specialist Adviser and Researcher
SoundSkills has an autism specialist adviser with a background in Psychology and extensive research experience in the fields of autism and hearing disorders. The Specialist Adviser and Researcher’s areas of responsibility include the following:
- provision of information and resources for autism-related services available in New Zealand
- triaging of client information from various sources (such as paediatricians, psychologists, speech language therapists, educational psychologists, occupational therapists) to help plan services for individuals with special needs
- working with SoundSkills audiologists on personalised APD assessment sessions based on individual children’s needs with the aim of making them effective and positive experiences
- attending APD assessment sessions with audiologists and families as required to provide extra assistance
- coordinating clinical research projects within SoundSkills, some of which involve giving clients the opportunity to trial new technology or treatment plans in a structured manner with objective, measurable goals.
Clinic Administrators
Clinic Administrators
Our Clinic Administrators are the first point of contact at SoundSkills. They guide clients through the referral process, answering queries and advising on options for audiological assessment and treatment for hearing and listening difficulties. Our Clinic Administrators assist with the following:
- booking and managing all appointments
- ensuring pre-assessment paperwork is completed and relevant reports and forms are collected and forwarded to clinicians before client appointments
- guidance on services and associated costs at SoundSkills
- advice on troubleshooting and maintenance of hearing technology equipment.
Our people
Our people
Dr Bill Keith
Dr Bill Keith QSO PhD MNZAS
Director
Dr Bill Keith is an audiologist with over fifty years public and private sector experience.
Bill was Principal Audiologist, National Audiology Centre, Department of Health, and was involved in establishing many hearing services and policies in New Zealand including the University of Auckland School of Medicine audiology training programme and New Zealand's first cochlear implant service. He has continued to consult on various national hearing policy issues.
He established the hearing aid company Phonak New Zealand Ltd (a subsidiary of the Swiss Sonova group) in New Zealand and managed it for eighteen years, earning a number of business awards during that time.
Bill has carried out hearing research in New Zealand and the United States. He is also the inventor of an automated paediatric audiometer that was manufactured and exported from New Zealand for a number of years.
With Phonak colleagues Bill was closely involved with Team New Zealand for over ten years in the development of specialised on-board crew communication systems for their Americas Cup yachts.
Bill has been awarded the honour of Companion of the Queen's Service Order for Public Service, a Fulbright Travel Award for his graduate studies at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and Life Memberships of the NZ Audiological Society and the Hearing Association, Auckland Branch. In 2011 he was awarded the International Award in Hearing by the American Academy of Audiology. AAA Award William Keith
Over the past fifty years Bill has served on numerous health, research, deafness, professional, business and voluntary organisation committees and Boards. He chaired the Northern Cochlear Implant Trust which manages government-funded cochlear implant services and was Deputy Chair of the associated Pindrop Foundation. He served on the Board of the Abilities Foundation Charitable Trust, the National Steering Team for Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (Project HIEDI), and the Scientific Committee and Board of the Deafness Research Foundation. He is also a Past National President of the Hearing Association and is on the Board of the Hearing Association, Auckland.
Bill currently runs SoundSkills, a specialist clinic for children and adults with auditory processing disorder (APD), which he has established to redress the lack of APD services in New Zealand; and carries out APD teaching and research at the University of Auckland.
Jenny Coutts
Jenny Coutts Dip Tchg, BEd, Grad Dip Lit Ed
Education Adviser
Jenny Coutts is an Education Adviser at SoundSkills. She specialises primarily in supporting children with auditory processing disorder in the classroom. Jenny works alongside children, parents and caregivers, Learning Support Coordinators, Special Education Needs Coordinators, and teachers to provide guidance and advice on the use, management and trialling of amplification systems for APD, and strategies to support the student.
Jenny has more than 30 years’ experience as a primary school teacher, the last six years of which she served as Deputy Principal and Special Education Needs Coordinator for her school. As a Special Education Needs Coordinator, Jenny was responsible for services and care for all children with sensory, learning, and behavioural challenges in the school. Previously, Jenny had trained as a Resource Teacher for Literacy, assisting children with reading difficulties. Jenny has undertaken additional special training in the management of auditory processing disorder.
Jenny has always had a passion for helping children meet their potential. Jenny enjoys working alongside the other team members at SoundSkills in supporting the children who come to us, and their families.
Karen Blackall
Karen Blackall PGDip Ed – Learning and Behaviour, B A, Dip Tchg Hearing Impaired, Dip Tchg
Education Adviser
Karen Blackall is an Education Adviser. She seeks to ensure that the parents, SENCos and teachers of SoundSkills’ child clients have a better understanding of APD and its impacts on learning. She provides advice and guidance on the use of Remote Microphone Hearing Aid (RMHA) systems, the funding eligibility criteria and the trial process. Karen is the link between SoundSkills’ clinic and the school, ensuring optimal learning opportunities for students.
Karen has over 30 years’ experience in the education sector, having held a range of teaching positions that are specialised in nature such as Resource Teacher, Learning and Behaviour (RTLB); and Resource Teacher, Deaf (RTD). She has held leadership positions within schools, working across the primary, intermediate, secondary, and tertiary education sectors. Karen has worked alongside students, parents, and teachers to collaboratively devise interventions to meet students’ individual needs – adapting class-based programmes, scaffolding learning, and using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to promote inclusion.
Karen has presented at conferences and facilitates professional learning for schools in a variety of areas including sensory, learning and behaviour challenges.
Karen enjoys working collaboratively as part of multidisciplinary team both at SoundSkills and within schools to ensure that students reach their learning potential.
Dr Joan Leung
Dr Joan Leung PhD
Advisor on Hearing for Autism
Dr Joan Leung is a Specialist Adviser and Researcher: ASD and APD at SoundSkills. She is also a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Psychology in the University of Auckland.
Joan has extensive research experience that spans many fields, but primarily in the hearing sciences, and with a special interest in neurodevelopmental disorders and in particular autism. For her doctoral research, Joan helped autistic children improve their speech perception and social communication by providing auditory training plus hearing amplification with remote-microphone hearing systems.
Joan currently splits her time between working at SoundSkills, and on various research projects based at the Universities of Auckland and Otago. She also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate Psychology courses, as well as some modules for the Master of Speech-Language Therapy Practice programme at the University of Auckland.
Joan finds it very rewarding to work alongside the clinicians at SoundSkills with an aim to better serve their ever-expanding and diversifying client base, including children with more severe challenges.
Our purpose
Our purpose
SoundSkills' vision is to assist people with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) to achieve their optimal communication ability by;
- offering comprehensive, expert and up-to-date diagnostic and treatment services for APD
- translating scientific research on APD into clinical practice
- carrying out research into APD
- developing model APD services for others to follow
- advocating for better funding and services for people with APD, and
- increasing awareness of APD.
SoundSkills strives to provide;
- ethical and professional services
- a supportive and caring culture, and
- expert knowledge and advice.
Our story
Our story
SoundSkills was started by audiologist Dr Bill Keith to provide an expert comprehensive service for the management of APD, a neglected and under-funded area of hearing services. Having studied APD at Baylor College of Medicine in the United States, and dismayed at the lack of APD services in New Zealand, Dr Keith set about bringing together a specialist multi-disciplinary team to develop better APD services in New Zealand.
The SoundSkills APD Clinic opened with one clinician and one clinic room alongside the audiology and speech-language clinics of the School of Population Health at the Tamaki Innovation Campus of the University of Auckland under the University’s policy of encouraging synergistic start-ups to locate on campus. Pre-used equipment was donated by a hearing aid company. When we outgrew the available university space we built a new clinic in The Parenting Place, Greenlane. More equipment was donated by a retail audiology chain. Eventually, bursting at the seams again, we were fortunate to become a foundation tenant in the ideal location of the new purpose-built Hearing House facility, the Stichbury Bidwill Centre. The Centre is the home of The Hearing House, provider of children’s and adult cochlear implant services; and other organisations involved in clinical services and research in communication disorders.
Today our SoundSkills team of specialists in audiology, special education, speech-language therapy and autism operates a model clinic serving clients from all over New Zealand, participates in APD teaching and research, disseminates information and knowledge about APD nationally and internationally, advocates for better APD services and funding, and fields inquiries about APD from all over the world.
Our supporters and collaborators
Our supporters and collaborators
SoundSkills is supported financially by William Keith (founder) and Judith Keith, and has received project and research grants from a variety of organisations including:
- the Hearing Research Foundation
- the Eisdell Moore Hearing and Balance Research Centre, University of Auckland
- the William Demant Foundation, Denmark
- Sonova AG, Switzerland
- Intelligent Hearing Systems
- the NR and JH Thomson Charitable Trust, and
- Lottery Health Research.
SoundSkills collaborates with the University of Auckland and University of Memphis on research into APD.
SoundSkills is most grateful to its supporters and collaborators who make it possible for SoundSkills’ services to continue.
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Testimonials
Testimonials
“Thank you so much for sending through the report. We are extremely happy with the results. J is now listening to audio books through the Auckland Library Libby App. Her confidence at school has improved as has her ability. Thank you to your team for offering up a life changing service for our children.”- Parent
"The service was fantastic. Dr T was very special. She has an empathy for children and the expertise to back it up. …She gave something wonderful to our family – we are so grateful to her."- Parent
“Our daughter K has previously visited Soundskills to get tested for APD and to get fitted for hearing aids etc. ….we've found all our dealings with Soundskills to be excellent. A really great organisation!”- Parent