7:00pm Monday 12th January 2009
By Emma Joseph
LISTENING to Laura Bolter talking about the nine GCSEs she is taking and her plans to become a social worker, she sounds just like any other teenager.
But the 16-year-old is not quite the same as her peers – she was born profoundly deaf.
Laura, from West Moors, had a cochlear implant when she was three and spent four years attending a specialist nursery unit to bring her communication up to the same standard of other children her age.
By the time she was seven, Laura was ready for mainstream school and she hasn’t looked back since.
Although she has a note-taker who takes notes in classes to ensure she doesn’t fall behind, her communication is now so good that many of Laura’s peers do not even know she is deaf.
While Laura has been lucky with the support she has received, she is well aware not all deaf children have the same advantages.
That is why she is backing the National Deaf Children’s Society’s (NDCS) campaign, Must Do Better, which calls on the government to bridge the gap between deaf and hearing children.
Laura, who is also Ferndown’s current carnival queen, recently spoke to MPs about her plight on behalf of NDCS at the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth.
“It’s getting more support and getting a voice,” said Laura of the initiative.
“It’s really about opening up all those barricades for children so they can do what they want. We are trying to get everyone to have the same opportunities.”
Laura, along with other representatives from NDCS, spoke to 13 MPs about the campaign and was chosen by the charity, which initially wanted someone older than her to take part, because of her excellent communication skills.
“I thought I was going to mess up,” she confessed.
“But all of them were really nice and it felt really good to actually contribute to helping out. There was one particularly nice man who had a deaf daughter himself. She can’t talk at all, she signs.
“It was really amazing to talk to him because he can relate to my experiences and understand. We got quite a lot of support from it and they said I talked really well.”
Laura said even the slightest change would make a real difference to deaf children who had not been as lucky as she had.
“Other deaf children who don’t have note-takers or any kind of help struggle a bit.
“I’ve seen my friends who’ve been through it,” she said.
“I had someone who came to my house for three years, ever since I was diagnosed at a year old, and she helped me with everything and got me to the same level as other children my age. Quite a lot of children don’t have that now because there are very few of those people so they can’t go around everyone.”
Not content with trying to help others now, Laura also wants to base her career around supporting people and is confident she can achieve her goal.
“I want to go to college and train to be a social worker because I want to help people who haven’t really been given opportunities in life,” she explained. “It would just be great to give people opportunities. Maybe helping other deaf people, disabled people, those with special needs or maybe homeless people.
“You can reach your potential, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”
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