Mariavittoria Vallarino, Auditory Verbal Therapist

BSc (Hons) Speech and Language Therapist, certified Auditory Verbal Therapist LSLS Cert. AVT® 

 

Mariavittoria qualified as a speech and language therapist from the University of Genoa, in 2001. Since her bachelor degree dissertation on cochlear implants in children in 2001, she focused her work on giving the best service to families with deaf children. She worked in Italy for 13 years as a part of a Paediatric Rehabilitation Centre and Audiology teams in hospitals in Genoa, Rome and Modena, working on diagnosis and rehabilitation. 

The one day Workshop “Creating Auditory Learning Environment for Children who are Deaf or Hard of hearing”  in 2005 was her first encounter with Auditory Verbal Therapy. Since then, she has realised that there are no limits to what a deaf child can achieve.

In 2014, she moved to London to start her training to become LSLS Cert AVT with Auditory Verbal UK.

She decided to start volunteering for Auditory Verbal UK in order to learn as much as she could. To her,  their work was hugely inspirational and still is. After five years of training in December 2019,  she passed her exam and she was given the title of Listening and Spoken Language Specialist Auditory Verbal Therapist (LSLS Cert.AVT)  by the AG Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language, and now she is the first Italian and the first in Scotland to be LSLS Cert. AVT.

Becoming an AV therapist helped her to re-examine her beliefs and to adapt what she does in order to serve all families and children. She learnt to think critically and to analyse thoroughly her practice. As a bilingual therapist, she developed an interest in bilingual language acquisition in both hearing and deaf children, studying the best way to support families in their linguistic choices.

She was delighted to join AVUK in May 2021. She is based in Glasgow and works locally, remotely and in London Tuesday to Friday 8.30am to 4.30pm..

Email:[email protected]

Instagram:Mariavittoria Vallarino