From Family to Future: Lessons from the Global Early Intervention Conference

At the 2026 FCEI Conference in Austria, audiologist, researcher and parent Jermy Pang shared a deeply personal perspective on what it means to support deaf and children living with hearing loss and their families. Drawing on her experience as a deaf adult, a clinician and the parent of a child with hearing loss, Jermy reflects on the importance of family-centred care, language access, peer connection and giving families the time and support they need to make decisions with confidence.

At the FCEI Conference in Austria, you shared your family’s journey raising a deaf child. What was the key message you hoped delegates would take away from your story?

Braided together, the key message I hoped people would take away is that innovation, science and clinical choices matter. But they only become meaningful when families are supported with care and intention: time to take in unbiased information, support to make sense of it, and enough room to grow their own sense of agency and belonging.

The call to action are these:

Families should not feel rushed into certainty. We are allowed to pause, ask questions, revisit decisions and choose what fits our child and family. Information can arrive quickly, but meaning takes time.

For clinicians and early intervention providers, my hope is that they remember how powerful it can be to slow the pace, use plain language, and make space for questions. One of the most reassuring things a family can hear is: “You do not need to understand everything today.”

For researchers and service leaders, my message is to shape innovation with families, not simply deliver it to them. Bring families in early, pay them fairly, make meetings accessible, and involve families while research questions are still being shaped. Families care deeply about improving what comes next, and that lived experience is an asset to the work.

As both an audiologist and a parent, how has your personal experience shaped the way you think about supporting children who live with hearing loss and their families?

I often feel as though I am looking through several lenses at once: as a parent, as a deaf adult, as an audiologist, and as a researcher. Those perspectives are connected, but they are not the same.

People sometimes assume that because I am an audiologist, I automatically know what to do as a parent. But parenting brings its own questions, emotions and uncertainties. My child’s experience as a hard of hearing young person is also different from my own experience growing up deaf. That keeps me humble.

What my lived experience does give me is a strong belief in strengths-based support. I want children to grow up knowing they are whole, capable and allowed to take up space. I also want families to know they do not need to have everything figured out from the beginning.

I will not always get it right, but I am always learning. If some of what I have learnt can help another family, clinician, teacher or researcher build a lighthouse for someone else, then that feels worthwhile.

One of the themes discussed at the conference was family-centred care. What does truly family-centred support look like from a parent’s perspective?

Truly family-centred support starts by asking what matters to this family, not assuming that every family needs the same thing.

It means working with a family’s strengths, culture, hopes, worries and everyday realities. It also means recognising that diagnosis and entry into family-centred early intervention are not one-off moments. They are the beginning of ongoing support across a child’s life.

What families need is not a fixed plan that assumes today’s decisions will hold forever. We need provisional plans for lifelong access, support and care: plans that move, grow and adapt with the family unit, with the deaf or hard of hearing child at the centre. By provisional, I mean recognising that no decision is final. What a family needs when a child is newly diagnosed may be different from what they need at age three, thirteen or twenty-three.

Truly family-centred support also means moving away from the idea that families must select one communication modality as a single, fixed choice. Families need access to clear information about all communication options and then space to see what fits over time.

For some children and families, one pathway may feel right early on. For others, a combination of spoken language, sign language, visual supports, technology, gestures, captions and other communication tools may become part of everyday life. What matters most is language access. Children need full, rich and meaningful access to language as early as possible, in ways that work for them.

Language deprivation remains a real and urgent risk. The goal is not to win a modality debate. The goal is for children to have language, connection, agency and belonging.

The goal is not to win a modality debate. The goal is for children to have language, connection, agency and belonging.
— Jermy Pang

From a parent perspective, family-centred care also includes the child’s voice as early and as safely as possible. Children need support to understand their choices, express preferences and practise self-advocacy. Siblings matter too. They are part of the family system and can sometimes feel like quiet passengers in a journey that affects them deeply.

At its best, family-centred care is not a service doing things for families. It is a relationship where families, children and professionals work alongside each other with honesty, flexibility and respect.

Hear For You focuses on peer mentoring and lived experience. Why is it so important for young people with hearing loss to connect with others who have walked a similar path?

Peer mentoring matters because it makes possible futures visible.

Many deaf and hard of hearing young people are the only person like them in their school, friendship group or even their town. They may have supportive families and wonderful hearing friends, but there is something powerful about meeting someone who can say, “I have been there,” and mean it.

Deaf peer mentoring is not about telling young people there is only one way to be deaf or hard of hearing. It is about showing them a range of lives, choices, identities, communication styles, careers, friendships, and futures. It helps young people see that deafness is part of who they are, but not the whole story.

I also think it is important to recognise that programs and peer-led communities like Hear For You, Aussie Deaf Kids, Parents of Deaf Children, Deaf Children Australia, Usher Kids Australia and so, so many others each bring different strengths.

They should not be seen as competing with one another. Families and young people need more voices, more hands, more ways in.

One group might offer peer mentoring. Another might offer parent-to-parent support, advocacy, practical information, or a place to ask questions when the house is finally quiet. Together, these communities create a wider net of care.

I like the idea of light housing here. Mentors and parent communities do not live someone else’s life for them. They help illuminate the path, especially when things feel foggy.

As a parent, I also know my child will not always want deaf mentoring from me, and that is healthy. Young people need access to a wider community of lived and living experience, so they can explore who they are with choice and confidence.

Adolescence is often when identity, confidence and self-advocacy come into sharper focus. What impact have you seen programs like Hear For You have on young people as they navigate these years?

I see the impact in at least three places: the young people themselves, their families, and the mentors.

For young people, the change is not always one big dramatic moment. Often it is gradual, quiet shifts. A young person starts asking more questions, they contribute more, they return to the program recognising friends they made at the last event. They begin to advocate for what they need at school or with friends. They become more comfortable with their deafness or hearing difference.

Families feel it too. Parents might notice their teenager talking more at the dinner table, showing more confidence, or feeling excited to attend a program where they know they will be understood.

And then there is the beautiful full-circle moment when past mentees come back as mentors. That tells us something important. It means the program did not only support them in one season of life. It helped them imagine themselves as someone who could support others. Have you heard how highly sought after and inviting our twice a year social HFY mentor gatherings are? There are also less official gatherings that we stay connected through too.

The impact of peer mentoring is not always easy to measure in neat numbers. How do you measure the value of a young person feeling less alone? Or the confidence to ask for captions? Or the comfort of being in a room where you do not have to explain yourself? Those outcomes matter deeply.

Looking ahead, what gives you the most optimism about the future for deaf and hard of hearing children and young people in Australia?

What gives me hope is seeing more people understand that deaf and hard of hearing children do not need a single narrow pathway. They need access, language, belonging, good information, and communities that believe in their futures.

I am encouraged by the growing conversations between sign language communities and spoken language. More people are recognising that identity, communication and technology do not have to sit in opposition. Children and young people deserve options, and families deserve support to explore those options without judgement.

I also feel hopeful when I see parent leadership growing, not only in Australia but globally. Through spaces like GPODHH, I have learnt so much from other parent leaders who have generously shared both their wins and their losses. That generosity matters. It stops each new parent group from having to start from scratch.

But hope needs scaffolding. It needs funding, accessible programs, supportive policy, and communities willing to keep talking even when we do not always agree. Our middle ground should always be the children and young people at the centre.