CHILDRENS CHOICE FOR HEARING AND TALKING SACRAMENTO
11100 Coloma Road, Rancho Cordova, CA 95670 www.cchatsacramento.org

Total Revenue
$1,868,949
Total Expenses
$2,416,291
Net Assets
$1,678,570

Organizations Filed Purposes: At CCHAT Center, our singular mission is to teach children who are deaf or hard of hearing to develop the necessary speaking, listening, and communication skills required for lifelong success. Mastery of these core areas allows students from our program to matriculate into mainstream schools throughout Northern California. Not only do CCHAT Center graduates manage to keep pace with their hearing peers, but they actually thrive and go on to lead happy, healthy, and productive lives.

Children who are identified with hearing loss and who do not receive early intervention services fall behind their hearing peers in speech, language, listening, social, and literacy skills. Successful outcomes for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) are possible through hearing assistive technology such as hearing aids and cochlear implants, but they must be accompanied by intense specialized listening and spoken language (LSL) training. CCHAT is an innovative and effective program focused on teaching children with hearing loss to listen and develop spoken language. CCHAT continues to grow and refine our specialized services and delivery model to best meet the needs of this unique population. Children with hearing loss who attend our program and acquire LSL skills are able to access the full range of educational, social and vocational choices in life. Students attending the CCHAT Center were supported by their Local Education Agencies for the 2019-20 program year, but a funding gap remained. The funding gap between the cost for services and tuition was met by development income including individual donations, corporate donations, foundation grants and events as well as California Children's Services (CCS) billing and mainstream support contracts with school districts.The expected outcomes with this project are that children with hearing loss who receive these intensive early intervention services learn to listen, talk, read, and write and are ready to enter mainstream kindergarten with their hearing peers - SB210 Kindergarten Readiness. In addition, CCHAT is working with Columbia University to publish outcome data of children with hearing loss who meet the 1, 3, 6 criteria and receive appropriate intervention services to illustrate to policy makers the need to adequately fund early intervention programs.CCHAT's Accomplishments/Year In Review: CCHAT is a driving force to improve education for infants and children who are DHH. CCHAT primarily serves the greater Sacramento region, inclusive of nine counties and approximately 20% of the state of California.-November 2019, Teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Melissa McNamara became CCHAT's 7th staff member to achieve Listening and Spoken Language Specialist certification. -CCHAT partnered with hearing assistive and frequency modulation technology companies for its annual professional conference, held in November 2019. Attendees learned about the latest advancements, interacted with experts in this field and participated in hands-on troubleshooting sessions to help with managing this valuable technology in the classroom.-CCHAT staff members Dr. Ronda Rufsvold and Dr. Katie Isbell presented and submitted posters locally and nationally on a variety of LSL topics. Detailed descriptions of their contributions are in the grant report.-Due to COVID-19, CCHAT closed its doors to students, families and staff on Friday, March 13, 2020. With the closure of the physical school, CCHAT moved to a virtual learning platform for the remainder of the 2019-2020 program year to provide access to vital instruction and speech therapy for this vulnerable population. -15 students will be mainstreaming back into their neighborhood school settings for fall 2020.-CCHAT entered 62 students into the LSL-DR including:o IT-MAIS, PEACH, Little EARS, Rossetti and SKY*HI were entered for all babies, birth through age 3.o The SKY*HI will be entered for ALL students up to age 5. OPTION Schools, Inc Participation for 2019-20:-President: Laura Covello-LSL-DR Project Manager: Ronda RufsvoldCCS Approved Site: CCHAT continues to provide services to children and families supported by California Children's Services/Medical. We work cooperatively with the Newborn Hearing Screening program in an effort to provide vital hearing loss screenings, diagnostic evaluations and services to children in our region.Newborn Hearing Screening Follow-up Testing and Diagnostic Site: CCHAT provides quality clinical follow-up care to area residents whose newborns did not pass the inpatient Universal Newborn Hearing Screening. Prior to CCHAT's shutdown due to COVID-19, Dr. Katie Isbell performed 55 newborn hearing rescreening and diagnostic evaluations to families in the greater Sacramento area. Early diagnosis of hearing loss is the first step to ensuring that parents of infants who are DHH are given the information necessary to maintain hearing health and make an informed decision regarding their preferred communication option. Strategic Plan: During 2019-20, CCHAT continued our work to broaden our reach and expand our influence within our service area and beyond. -With the help of Search Engine Optimization strategies and informative blog posts on our website, CCHAT continues to move up in the Google rankings for information regarding hearing assistive technology, LSL services and quality outcomes for children with hearing loss. Additional information is included in the grant report. -Since CCHAT's website went live in April 2018, we have seen a drastic increase in website traffic.-April 2018 = 285 website visits-May 2020 = 2,078 website visits-There's been a large increase in search engine (Google) presence. Average keyword position/number of keywords on page 1 have been tracked. The goal is to have a lower average keyword position and higher number of keywords on page 1.-April 2018-Average keyword position = 93.24-Number of keywords on page 1 = 3-May 2020-Average keyword position = 44.75-Number of keywords on page 1 = 27-CCHAT hired a Fundraising and Public Relations Manager to further enhance our social media, outreach and event-based fundraising efforts.Parent/family Information: CCHAT promotes and strongly encourages active parent involvement including participation in class, therapy, and school wide activities. Parents and extended family members play a vital role in each child's LSL success. The highly qualified staff provides education and guidance to parents so that they may assist their child in developing independence and self-sufficiency. All parents are encouraged to be members of the Parent-Program-Partnership (P3). P3's mission is to help every child at CCHAT reach his/her full potential by engaging and empowering families and the community to advocate for children with hearing loss. Availability of Quality Programs/Services for Children With Hearing Loss, birth -3rd Grade:CCHAT's comprehensive network of programs supports children with hearing loss and their families through every step of the Family Journey, from the moment of diagnosis through successful mainstreaming. CCHAT's structured programs capitalize on the natural window for spoken language acquisition. In addition to Baby & Me, CCHAT offers programs and services for children with hearing loss through third grade.Audiology Services: CCHAT provides audiology as a related service for students with hearing loss attending our program. Services include hearing evaluation, family counseling regarding hearing loss, fitting of assistive listening devices, and troubleshooting. Currently, we have working relationships with Phonak, Oticon, Oticon Medical, Cochlear Americas, Advanced Bionics, and MED EL. CCHAT provides onsite support services for their devices. CCHAT's audiologist works closely with the educational staff, school districts, families, and local clinics to ensure a continuum of audiological care.Bilingual Services: CCHAT's bilingual (English/Spanish) Speech-Language Pathology Assistant (SLPA) provided speech therapy sessions for the CCHAT children who have Spanish as their home language. Translation support helped CCHAT families take an active role in IEP/IFSP meetings, and parent/teacher/SLP discussions and conferences. With consistent bilingual LSL support services, CCHAT has seen improved outcomes in children with hearing loss learning more than one spoken language.

Mainstream Support Services: With more children returning to school districts sooner, CCHAT's Mainstream Support Program continues to grow to support this transition and help ensure success for children with hearing loss at their neighborhood schools. The team is comprised of two full-time LSLS certified teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing with part-time help from CCHAT's educational audiologist and another certified teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. They provided direct and consultative DHH and educational audiology services to more than 300 students and 500 school district employees in 18 school districts during 2019-20. CCHAT LSL experts provide training of teachers, speech therapists and additional school personnel in surrounding school districts on classroom best practices for students with hearing loss and the use of hearing assistive technology. The demand for these services continues to grow. Networks of Professionals to Serve Children and Families Throughout the Child's Education: CCHAT maintains community collaborations with educational and medical professionals who support children with hearing loss. CCHAT is dedicated to bringing more qualified people to the LSL specialty. The Center supports students entering audiology, speech-language pathology and DHH teaching positions. During 2019-20, CCHAT partnered with CSU Sacramento and Pacific University Oregon to provide observation hours, internships and practicum placements. CSU Sacramento will launch an audiology doctoral program in the fall of 2019 and we will host their student clinicians. CCHAT is in its 5th year of collaborating with UC Davis researchers, providing support examining how children with cochlear implants learn language.

Executives Listed on Filing

Total Salary includes financial earnings, benefits, and all related organization earnings listed on tax filing

NameTitleHours Per WeekTotal Salary
Laura CovelloExecutive Director40$141,169
Lisa McwilliamsSpeech Pathology Coordinator32$105,683
Jeanie SimpsonBoard Member1$0
Devin McbrayerBoard Member1$0
Anne HarryBoard Member1$0
Erika FatulaBoard Member1$0
Derek CressmanBoard Member1$0
Ben BaloughBoard Member1$0
Julie Ahlquist TannerBoard Member1$0
Diane DurstonSecretary2$0
Bindu JaduramTreasurer2$0
John PorteousPast Chairperson2$0
Lisa MarwahaChairperson2$0

Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (public 990 form dataset) from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202110559349300131_public.xml