Our Staff

Cheryl Dickson
Clinical Director
M.Ed., Cert. AVT

Cheryl L. Dickson has been a Certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist since 1994, and was the first to achieve Certification in SE Asia. She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Elementary Education and a Masters Degree in Deaf Education. Cheryl has been teaching children with impaired hearing for twenty-five years, and is both proud and amazed to admit her first students are now having their own children, and teaching them to talk. Cheryl is currently in private practice in Sydney, Australia and consults throughout SE Asia. She has also mentored and trained numerous Auditory-Verbal Therapists, some of whom have achieved Auditory-Verbal Certification themselves. Cheryl has consulted with Cochlear Ltd, Med El, The Shepherd Centre, The Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre and Renwick College of the University of Newcastle, to name just a few of organisations who have utilised her expertise. Cheryl lived in Manila for two years and was the founding Director of CLASP Auditory-Verbal Centre.

Estelle Barlow
Programme Manager and Auditory-Verbal Therapist
Cert. AVT, B.Ed (Hons), Adv Post.Grad Dip HI, Adv Post.Grad Dip Spld, Post.Grad Dip Mgmt of Specialist Centre

Estelle qualified as a teacher in 1974 after a four-year degree course. Her first nine years were spent in the UK teaching in a primary classroom. This was followed by a promotion to Special Needs Team Leader for three years. She then taught for three years in Germany and two in Hong Kong. Following the births of her three children, one of whom is profoundly deaf, she returned to teaching with a post graduate qualification in Hearing Impairment. She then opened and, for the first three years, co-managed a Speech and Language Unit attached to a primary school in Salisbury, UK. A large, new Hearing Impaired Unit was opened in a secondary school nearby and Estelle was appointed leader there for a further four years. On arrival in NZ, she was initially employed as the Resource Manager at Kelston Deaf Education Centre and then transferred to The Hearing House where she is currently an Auditory-Verbal Therapist and the Programme Manager.

Alexandra Crosbie
Auditory-Verbal Therapist
Cert. AVT, Adv Tchg Cert, Dip HI

Alexandra has been teaching since 1992 and first specialised as a Teacher of the Deaf in 1996. She became a certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist in 2003. For the past seven years, she has been teaching hearing impaired children, aged 0-6 years. She came to Hearing House in September of 2004 because it was an Auditory-Verbal centre similar to The Shepherd Centre in Sydney (Australia) where she had been working for the previous five years. Alexandra enjoys seeing the positive results that can be achieved through a family/whanau-centred approach, which ensures parents and caregivers are given the necessary skills to work with their children.

Jayne Simpson
Auditory-Verbal Therapist
Cert. AVT, Dip.Teaching, B.Ed, M.Ed

Jayne has been a teacher of the deaf since 1986. She became a certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist in 2000, mentored by Christina Perigoe, PhD. She has worked for various educational facilities and Auditory-Verbal Therapy centres throughout Queensland (Australia), Christchurch and Auckland. Highlights of her career have been Centre Co-ordinator of The Hear and Say Centre in Cairns (Queensland, Australia); travelling to Auditory-Verbal centres throughout the United States and Canada on her Churchill Fellowship; and becoming the first certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist in the South Island of New Zealand.

Lydia O'Connor
Auditory-Verbal Therapist
BSLT

Lydia graduated in 2006 from the University of Canterbury with a Bachelor of Speech and Language Therapy. Towards the end of her degree, she undertook three months of work experience at a school attached to the University of Northern Iowa, USA. When Lydia returned to New Zealand, she worked as a Speech-Language Therapist for Group Special Education in the Wairarapa, where she provided speech and language therapy to children aged 0-13 with a range of communication impairments, including some with hearing loss. Lydia took up the position of Auditory-Verbal Therapist at The Hearing House in August 2007.

Michelle Hartnett
Clinical Services Coordinator 

Commencing 21st June 2010.