The RIA program provides Outaouais residents of all ages with specialized rehabilitation and adaptation services or compensatory technical aids related to a hearing impairment.

The services are for people of all ages with:

• congenital or acquired deafness
• bothersome tinnitus or hyperacusis
• potential or diagnosed Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)
• auditory neuropathy

People registered in the intensive rehabilitation program have hearing impairments that are so severe that they hinder the individual’s development or social integration at the professional, family and academic levels, even though they may have been treated by an audiologist at a hospital, by an audio-prosthetist or by an ENT doctor.

The purpose of this program is to help the client develop or regain optimal functional independence in carrying out daily activities, based on his hearing abilities.

Additional information: the service is governed by the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec and falls under the technical hearing aids component, thereby allowing required technical aids to be acquired or repaired in accordance with the RAMQ’s eligibility criteria.

How do I access the services?

A rehabilitation/adaptation service request should be submitted by CISSS Outaouais workers or physicians and forwarded to the ID-PD-ASD program access point.

The following people have priority access to the intensive rehabilitation program:

• People whose ability to remain in school or to keep a job is compromised.
• People whose safety is significantly compromised.
• People undergoing functional rehabilitation following a cochlear implant.

Professionals

The services are provided by an interdisciplinary team of professionals from a variety of disciplines who will assess your needs and provide you with the services required based on availability:

• Audiologist
• Special educator
• Occupational therapist
• Speech therapist
• Psychologist
• Psychoeducator
• Social worker

Home care support services 

• Social intervention home care support
• Nursing care
• Physiotherapy
• Occupational therapy
• Nutrition
• Respiratory therapy
• Home help
• Services for family caregivers
  Examples: bio-psycho-social needs assessment, protective supervision, wound care, fall prevention, functional assessment, help with personal hygiene, respite care, etc.

Rehabilitation services

• Multidisciplinary assessments of the needs of the person and his relatives as to the reason for the referral and the disruption of daily activities.
• Teaching of communication strategies.
• Equipment optimization.
• Support for using technical aids.
• Auditory training.
• Lip reading training.
• Speech and language development therapy for children.
• Psychosocial support assessments and interventions for clients and their relatives to help them adjust to the impact of hearing impairment and with social/academic/community integration.
• Support for coping with tinnitus or hyperacusis.
• FM (frequency modulation) systems pairing for school environments.
• Intensive follow-up and post-cochlear implant interdisciplinary intervention by the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Québec (CHUQ): post-implant intensive functional rehabilitation.

Group interventions

• Communication strategies, to acquire knowledge and develop new skills for more effective communication.
• Lip Reading, to improve clients’ understanding of oral messages during communication by providing visual access to some sounds that cannot be heard by a person who is hard of hearing.

Highly specialized services

• Financial assistance for clients with dual impairment (hearing and visual).
• Initial speech and language pathology assessment for LSQ (langage des signes québécois) provided by the Raymond-Dewar Institute (IRD).
• Assessment and initial programming for clients with a cochlear implant provided by the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec and the Institut de réadaptation en déficience physique du Québec (IRDPQ).

Where are services provided?

• Home care support services are provided in the individual’s living environment.
• The rehabilitation service is centralized at 92 St-Raymond Blvd., Suite 100, Gatineau, but some ambulatory services are delivered throughout the territory.