Tina Kirwin

Tina is a qualified teacher of deaf children (B.Ed Hons/Ad Dip Ed) and is currently the senior manager of the Hearing Needs team in the Sensory Support Service in Manchester.  Tina as well as managing a large team of teachers of the deaf and specialist teaching assistants, also continues to teach deaf children who are educated either through BSL or using an oral approach from newborn to year 11. She supports pupils both at home and in nurseries, mainstream and special schools.

She has used Cued Speech with many pupils over the last ten years for teaching lipreading, phonic skills and spelling. She introduced Cued Speech to the Service and 19 staff have now had some degree of training within it. Many of the  staff use it with profoundly deaf pupils who have English as a second language.Tina runs a Cued Speech club for parents and staff which is well attended.  The staff  from the Manchester SSS regularly attend the Cued Speech Association’s cue camp.