Meet the Team

Office Staff

Henrietta Ireland

Henrietta was the manager of a multi-agency youth offending team (YOT). Her passion lies in working with and advocating for, families and children who may be isolated by and discriminated through disability or disadvantage.

As YOT Manager she obtained funding for specialist Speech and Language Therapy input, a successful innovation which was taken up UK-wide.

Working closely with the speech, language and communication consultant has provided Henrietta with additional skills and understanding around the complexity of communication and language and its impact on educational outcomes and behaviour, she has also had direct experience of working with Deaf Young people. She strongly believes that every child has the right to access language and should be given the very best opportunity to achieve their maximum potential and be able to provide a positive contribution.

Cate Calder - Training Lead

Cate Calder is the DCUK Training and Resources Lead. Her work in the last few years has been building on the creation of the digital cueing avatar, extending into an entire phonics intervention for visual learners like deaf children. This resource gives a bespoke pathway into literacy learning where staff and student alike have the chance to develop visual language skills together and discover the value of Cued Speech. Feedback from schools has been excellent and it is clear that staff are engaging and deaf children are benefitting.

She continues to promote the work of the charity, widen the range of resources we can offer and collaborate with outside partners to strengthen the evidence for our work.

Louise Creed - Business Manager

Louise joined the charity in November 2008. Louise has a background mainly focused in the hospitality, health and fitness industry, taking on many different roles and responsibilities. She switched her attention to the IT world back in 1999 and has since spent many happy hours and days trying to make networks and software work! After having her daughter and moving back to Dartmouth she can now be found in the Deaf Choices office or walking her dog Blaze who is a very good boy. Click here to contact Louise.

Debbie Hawke - Senior Administrator

Debbie has worked for the charity for over 15 years having previoulsy experienced a varied career from arranging mortgages to hospitality as well as first hand experience of supporting children with a range of special needs in a local school. Debbies role still remains varied encompassing a wide range of administration supporting the charity.

Kathy Kenny - Lead Choices Advisor

Kathy Kenny is a Regional Family Advisor (RFA). Kathy continues to focus her work as an RFA in the Southwest region but will take referrals from other regions and when requested, from abroad! Her training as a teacher and her experience of deafness through having a deaf child herself means that she brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her work.

Kathy has been working in partnership with Evolve Music. Together they have established a music group for Mums and babies called 'Adventurers' . This has brought a multi-agency approach to working with families and professionals in the Plymouth area, which has proved to be a very successful model for engaging with families.

Kathy works with our key schools in the Southwest where there is a specialist unit for deaf children. She has worked in several schools to introduce Deaf Choice's 'Nan in a Van' literacy resource.

She is training to become a TOD with Liverpool St. John Moore University and is due to qualify next year 2027.

Mark Murton - Fundraising and Administrative Assistant

Mark Murton joined the Deaf Choices UK team in April 2019 as our administrative assistant. Mark has a background in both the charity and public sector and has spent many years working with people that are homeless or insecurely housed. He fulfilled a dream by recently moving to Devon from London to spend even more time walking the South West Coast Path. Mark, who works part-time at our office in Totnes, says he is very excited to return to the charity sector and to be supporting such a good cause.

Cat Rusbridge - Schools Liaison Adviser

Cat's role is to work with children, schools and families as a Regional Family Advisor (RFA) and will take referrals UK wide.

Cat moved from a SENDCo role in Primary Education and joined the charity with over 10 years of experience in Education across multiple specialist settings including a Deaf School. Her experience lends itself well to supporting children with Neurodiversity as well as Deafness.

Cat has worked closely with Evolve music Charity to setup and run music groups in the Torbay area and is looking to expand this into other areas. This music group called 'Adventurers' is emulating the role roll out of this multi-agency model that has been running successfully with Kathy in Plymouth.

Cat has worked with several schools across the Southwest to support them to implement our Literacy resource 'Nan in a Van' alongside supporting and training children/families in the use of Cued Speech, reaching as far as the surrounding area of Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Cat has used a lot of different communication systems and Literacy programmes, but she believes that NIAV will be a key resource in closing the Literacy gap for both pupils who are d/Deaf or have special educational needs. Cat has personal experience of using cued speech with her daughter who has glue ear and feels passionate about boosting access to this visual system/Literacy resource for others.

Charity Trustees

Peter Bowman

Peter is the father of a deaf son brought up with Cued Speech. He is a chartered Civil Engineer and his early career was with the Costain Group working in the UK and around the UAE Gulf States. He then joined Shell UK and worked on Projects in the North Sea until he moved to Den Haag and worked on mega projects across the globe. After 25 years Peter retired from Shell and operated his own project services consultancy for a few years until the oil priced dropped in January 2016.

Peter chose Cued Speech for his profoundly deaf son in 1985 (a year after he was born) and attended a number of beginners and intermediate courses in Canterbury. Peter became a trustee in 1986 and was elected chair of National Centre of Cued Speech Management Committee for a number of years until 1995 during a time when fundraising and raising the profile of Cued Speech were the key objectives. His son benefitted from Cued Speech and now works for ITV adding sign language bubbles to the current programmes. His ability to communicate in the deaf and the hearing world is excellent.

Peter’s return to being a trustee with time to offer the charity is a result of his reduced travel and consultancy engineering commitments. However, he does enjoy staying active with his vegetable patch and minor building projects around the home.

Sarah Elumba-Hill

Sarah has a BSc Information Technology degree and has worked in Information Technology and Sales. She now runs her own business, Hill Top Brews LTD, where she sells and supplies roast to order coffee beans, equipment and supplies.

Sarah has been profoundly deaf since birth and has worn hearing aids for 34 years and now wears a Cochlear Implant. She looks forward to learning to Cue. Having experienced a different type of multi-sensory speech therapy growing up, she sees the benefit of how Cued Speech can improve the quality of life for a deaf person.

Ken Orpin

Ken is the grandfather of a deaf child brought up with Cued Speech. Ken’s early career was with the Merchant Navy, before moving into a sales career in the food industry. He later moved into the shop-fitting business with his own company, fitting out shops and organising exhibitions throughout the UK. For the past 26 years Ken has run a painting and decorating business.

Ken became aware of Deaf Choices UK after his granddaughter was born deaf. She lives in France with her parents and brother, who all attended a Cued Speech course in Exeter. His granddaughter, now 11, not only speaks fluent French and English but uses Cued Speech and signing in both languages. The whole family has benefited enormously by learning to cue.

Ken attended a Foundation course in Exeter three years ago and loves communicating with his granddaughter. He also enjoys speaking about and promoting Deaf Choices UK from a grandfather’s point of view and therefore accepted an offer to become a Trustee. He has served on several committees including the Scout Movement and Choral Societies. He helps with our fundraising by constantly getting others to part with their old mobile phones! Ken also hopes to arrange a charity concert soon, raising some much needed funds for the charity.

Christine Hardy

Christine is the Chair person of the charity, and brings with her a wealth of knowledge from growing up in the deaf community, as a child of a deaf adult. With NVQ Level 6 in British Sign Language and a rich and varied background in which she has used her linguistic skills in the working world, she will be a vital member of our committee. She currently works ‘Advocacy, Rights and Awareness Manager’ for Deafblind UK, whom she has worked for now for ten years, and has an educational background in both linguistics and law.

Jacob Twomey

Passionate about leveraging marketing expertise for good, Jacob brings his 8 years of commercial experience to the Board of Trustees. He will be instrumental in developing and executing strategic plans for the exciting new initiative of establishing a trading branch for the charity.

Jacob's experience in branding, lead generation, and business development, combined with his positive and collaborative outlook will be invaluable as we work towards creating a sustainable trading branch. This will allow us to generate income to support our goal in enabling as many deaf children and families as possible with access to language and literacy. With his dedication and consultancy, we are confident that this new venture will have a significant impact on the lives of deaf individuals in our community.

Patrons

DAME EVELYN GLENNIE

Dame Evelyn Glennie is the first person in history to successfully create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist, performing worldwide with the greatest orchestras, conductors and artists. She fondly recalls having played the first percussion concerto in the history of The Proms at the Albert Hall in 1992, which paved the way for orchestras around the world to feature percussion concerti. She had the honour of a leading role in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Evelyn regularly provides masterclasses and consultations designed to guide the next generation. She is also a leading commissioner of over 200 new pieces for solo percussion for many of the world’s most eminent composers. The film ‘Touch the Sound’ and her enlightening TED speech remain key testimonies to her approach to sound-creation.

Evelyn was awarded an OBE in 1993 and now has over 100 international awards to date, including the Polar Music Prize and the Companion of Honour. Evelyn continues to inspire and motivate people from all walks of life. Her masterclasses and consultations are designed to guide the next generation.

Evelyn is currently embarking on the formation of The Evelyn Glennie Collection. The vision is to open a centre that embodies her mission to Teach the World to Listen. She aims to ‘improve communication and social cohesion by encouraging everyone to discover new ways of listening as proven in her book ‘Listen World!’. We want to inspire, to create, to engage and to empower’.

You can learn more about Evelyn’s work on her website: www.evelyn.co.uk

MR GAVIN MORRISON MA FRCS

Mr Morrison is a Consultant Otolaryngologist and Cochlear Implant surgeon, treating children at the London Evelina Children’s Hospital, and both adults and children in the leading London private hospitals.

He trained in Cambridge and at the Middlesex (now University College) Hospital in London and following his appointment as Consultant to St Thomas’ he quickly identified a need there for a dedicated paediatric ENT department to care for both the local and the wider national community of children with not only routine ENT problems, but more particularly the rarer cases of ear disease, hearing loss, and airway conditions presenting from birth onwards.

Some 20 years later, that hospital now boasts an internationally recognised children’s hospital offering treatment and care in all the disciplines across the medical, surgical and intensive care spectrum. The Paediatric ENT department alone now has a team of 7 consultants including cochlear implant surgeons, and training posts with teaching, research and development on an impressive scale.

Mr Morrison has wide experience in complex ear operations to treat mastoid disease, hearing loss, cochlear implant and balance problems in both children and adults, but surgery alone cannot be separated from the patient’s wider condition and needs, and in this respect he has developed and researched the different possibilities and pathways of care and the increasing opportunities in hearing rehabilitation.

In addition to his busy clinical practice, he has held several national posts, most recently as President of the Otology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine (2017-18) and President of the British Association for Paediatric Otorhinolaryngology (2012-14). For many years he served as examiner on the Intercollegiate Specialty Board and was until recently on the Council of ESPO (European Society for Paediatric Otolaryngology). He is a sought-after teacher and speaker for training and research conferences both in the UK and abroad.

DR HELEN WILLIS

Helen became totally deaf in both ears as a toddler, as the result of damage caused by meningitis. At the age of three, she received a unilateral cochlear implant. Despite the profound challenges of accessing education as a deaf student, Helen persevered and many years later graduated from Oxford University (St. John’s College) with a First Class Honours degree in Physiology and Psychology and an MSc in Neuroscience. Helen then began postgraduate research at University College London, sponsored by Action on Hearing Loss and Cochlear UK. She gained her PhD in Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences in 2018.

As a deaf person, Helen has first hand experience of the extremely challenging listening conditions that deaf people endure and how much listening effort (LE) is needed to cope and achieve successful auditory perception during everyday life. Her interest in auditory neuroscience grew from these experiences. During her time at Oxford University, Helen was able to explore the altered physiology involved in the deaf brain, particularly when interacting with hearing technology (such as cochlear implants). These insights led her to conclude that sustained exposure to excessive LE not only causes cognitive overload and over-tiredness but also, alarmingly, has the potential for other negative consequences such as physical and mental health problems. This is because cognitive overload can trigger a chronic stress response in the body.

This motivated Helen to undertake postgraduate research, in an attempt to find a framework for a behavioural measure of LE which might eventually become a clinical test. She felt that there should be some means to assess LE, so that its occurrence and effects could be more closely monitored in deaf people. Her research focussed on cochlear implant (CI) users, because it is recognised that the implant can only provide a sensation of hearing, and that the auditory information delivered is impoverished compared to that provided through normal hearing. This increases the likelihood of CI users experiencing high levels of LE.

Helen’s research findings, using an early prototype of a behavioural LE test, suggested that LE was already high for CI users even in the best possible listening conditions (i.e. with no background noise at all). This appeared to be a direct result of trying to process the degraded sound, because Helen found similar results in normal hearing participants listening to simulations of the same CI input.

These findings have motivated Helen to begin to liaise with a wide range of organisations, which support deaf children and adults, in an attempt to raise awareness of the impact of LE. She is particularly concerned that parents and teachers of deaf children should appreciate the need for continuing support in educational settings. This is because, although bilaterally implanted children often achieve outstanding performance in spoken language (and appear to understand speech remarkably well in noisy conditions), they are still vulnerable to the effects of excessive LE. This vulnerability is because of the additional processing burden imposed by the impoverished sound they hear.

For this reason, Helen is supportive of any intervention that reduces the cognitive load of understanding speech. In particular, she advocates the use of “multimodal” cues. Neuroscience research has repeatedly shown that processing speech is “multimodal”, where information from other senses (such as vision) has an important role for understanding speech. Indeed, although Helen herself is principally “ora/aural” and can understand speech without any other input, she has personal experience of how much her own LE reduces when lip reading and sign supported English (SSE) are added. As a result, she is extremely interested in Cued Speech, because she can see its potential in reducing LE.

Deaf Choices UK has been able to draw upon Helen’s research and expertise to support people’s understanding of the underlying rationale for using Cued Speech, in terms of both neuroscience and cognitive psychology. This theoretical underpinning has helped to provide some academic justification for the use of Cued Speech with babies and children, in their early years and throughout their education.

NIGEL HINTON

Nigel Hinton was born in London and educated at Dulwich College. He is the author of over twenty books and short stories and has written for TV, film, radio and theatre. Prior to his career as a writer, he worked in advertising and as a teacher, during which time he wrote his first novel for teenagers. When it was published to international acclaim, he gave up his position as Head of English in a secondary school to concentrate on writing.

He has written a further 24 books as well as multiple short stories, TV and movie screenplays, theatre plays and numerous songs. He has been partially deaf since he was a teenager, so he is enthusiastic about supporting deaf people and the work of Cued Speech UK.

Aside from writing, Nigel’s interests include playing the guitar and the ukulele, walking, bird watching, cycling, music, movies, drawing and supporting Charlton Athletic Football Club through thick and thin. He is married and lives in East Sussex.