Three-year-old Charlie Francis of Gymea Bay has a special mission to accomplish this Christmas.
Charlie has been selected as the face of The Shepherd Centre’s 2017 Christmas Appeal which aims to raise $150,000 to provide support services for families with deaf or hearing impaired children.
Charlie was born with profound hearing loss and her mum, Mel said The Shepherd Centre has been with the family every step of the way to help Charlie enjoy a happy and involved childhood.
First-time parents Ben and Mel found out their baby daughter was deaf when she did not respond to a new-born hearing test two days after she was born.
A follow-up test at Sydney Children’s hospital confirmed that Charlie was hearing-impaired.
She was diagnosed with moderate-severe hearing loss in her right ear and severe-profound hearing loss in her left ear.
“It was devastating,” Mel said. “It’s your first little baby and you want it to be perfect.
“It is a genetic loss. Ben and I carry the Connexin 26 gene which carries hearing impairment.
“Charlie got both our faulty copies.”
Charlie received her first hearing aids when she was four-weeks old and started going to The Shepherd Centre at Newtown when she was three-months old.
She goes to audio verbal therapy every week at the centre teaching her to listen and speak.
“They have helped us with everything,” Mel said. “She got her first hearing aids at four-weeks old and over time we felt they weren’t quite doing everything they should have been doing.
“She had cochlear implant surgery on her left ear at 16-months and then when she was three-years old she had her second cochlear impact on her right-hand side.”
Charlie, who turns four at the end of December, continues to make big strides with her therapy at The Shepherd Centre.
“Now she does everything. She is doing really well at her preschool. She has lots of friends and is very social.
“She’s a confident little girl that will just walk into a room and want to make friends. Before she was a little bit unsure and would stand back. Now she just sort of runs to join in and it’s amazing to see.
“Every time she says a beautiful sentence of five or six words, you just sort of go, ‘Oh, it’s finally here!’ It’s all just coming together and she’s growing in leaps and bounds.”
Mel said Charlie doesn’t realise that she has been selected as the image for the Shepherd Centre’s 2017 Christmas Appeal.
“I am very happy to do anything to support the centre. They have done so much for us,” Mel said.
“Charlie wouldn’t be doing what she is today without the help and guidance we have been given at the centre. Knowing that we will still have that help in years to come is so comforting.”
The funding raised from the Shepherd Centre’s 2017 Christmas Appeal will go to support deaf and hearing impaired children in NSW, the ACT and Tasmania.
The Shepherd Centre is a NSW-based not-for-profit organisation specialising in early intervention to help children who are daf and hearing-impaired develop spoken language skills.
Since its foundation the center has helped more than 2,000 children.
The centre said up to 50 per cent of deaf children are currently missing out on crucial services and not being supported by specialised early intervention services.
The Shepherd Centre chief executive officer, Dr Jim Hungerford said it costs nearly $20,000 per child to provide these services.
“The Shepherd Centre relies heavily on fundraising and donations to support more than 470 families, like Charlie’s, who turn to them for help each year,” he said.
You can donate to support children like Charlie and The Shepherd Centre at: