Beatrice Cadman, 15, attended Auditory Verbal UK when she was young and is now one of our young ambassadors. Here, she explains what is was like coming back to AVUK for work experience:

I was born with a profound hearing loss and attended sessions at AVUK before graduating at 5 years old. After making a speech at the House of Commons in 2016, I was offered the role of becoming a young ambassador with the charity.

I have now spent two days at AVUK’s office on work experience to gain some independence and to also see what goes on behind the scenes. After a warm welcome to the office, I was given the task of finding different toy libraries in the UK and coming up with some questions for a video interview with one of the therapists which will be shared by Auditory Verbal UK in the next few months. 

I really enjoyed interviewing Natalie because she explained what she enjoyed about her job. I was also given my own laptop and was able to work amongst everyone else in the office which made me feel very grown up!

In the afternoon, I was lucky enough to join in a session with a little boy who had recently got cochlear implants. The highlight of the session for me was not only watching the boy learn new words but also making playdough! The session also included playing a bug game and getting the boy to respond to somebody knocking on the door along with other activities. I was really grateful that the boy’s family let me join their session as it reminded me of when I was travelling to AVUK as a baby.

After an early start, I arrived on my second day and began at my desk continuing some of my work from the day before. Afterwards I was able to join another session with a little boy and his family which was really interesting. For the afternoon I continued my research.

Overall, I really enjoyed my two days at AVUK. I feel so grateful to everyone for making me feel so welcome and I would recommend it for work experience.