2008’s recipient of the Lexus Owner’s Gift is the Hear and Say Centre.

The Hear and Say Centre is one of the leading Paediatric Auditory-Verbal and cochlear implant centres in the world, teaching children who are deaf or hearing impaired to listen and speak since 1992.

The Centre aims for its children to achieve speech and language in the normal range for their age by six years of age giving them the opportunity for a mainstream education, employment of choice and social integration with the hearing world.

The Centre is a charity based in Brisbane with regional centres on the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Cairns and Toowoomba with an Outreach program for rural and remote children. It is a family based program recognizing the parent as the natural language teacher of the child.

The Hear and Say Centre offers to children with hearing loss the potential to;

• Hear the world around them
• Listen to their parents, families and friends
• Speak like their hearing friends
• Believe they can do anything they want
• Dream about a future with many possible life pathways

The Lexus Owners’ Gift will provide the Hear and Say Centre with a much needed occupational therapy room, named the Lexus Owners’ Room.

This room will provide an area where the treatment of sensory integration will;

• Help the child to achieve optimal speech, language, cognitive and motor developmental milestones
• Lead to improved opportunity for each child to achieve their potential

Children who come through the Hear & Say Centre are given the opportunity to lead normal lives with normal career paths as opposed to being unable to integrate into society and be reliant on Government pensions.

Visit the Hear and Say Centre’s website