Bridges employment program

Budgeting and Financial Planning. Credit Repair Planning. Conflict Management Training. Long-Term Goal Setting. Search for:. Menu Contact. Search for: Search. Need Help? Call us. Send us a Message. Intellectual Disabilities. Employment Services Everyone wants to give back and feel productive. Pittsburgh Mercy offers many employment programs for adults with intellectual disabilities.

Today, we are a comprehensive service organization with programs and services for birth through senior years. We serve individuals and families in these areas who live with hearing loss, providing education, outreach, case management, interpreting services, and more--always striving for a vibrant community of equality, access, opportunity, and self realization, a community in which all are welcomed and valued.

Now in our 92nd year of service, we are grateful for our rich history and for the even richer opportunities before us. Individuals with hearing loss are hard of hearing, deaf, or Deaf. In , Bridges helped pass a law to change "hearing impaired" and "hearing impairment" to "deaf or hard of hearing" and "hearing loss" in the Tennessee Annotated Code.

Bridges offers workshops in Deaf culture, working with Deaf and hard of hearing people, employing Deaf and hard of hearing people, and interactions with law enforcement and other first responders. Lack of communication has many effects on a child's cognitive and social-emotional development and on family dynamics. Deaf children can experience the same 30 million word gap as children born into poverty because they share the lack of early exposure to vocabulary and learning.

Language deprivation is an Adverse Childhood Experience and must be recognized as such. Bridges offers FREE ASL classes to the parents and siblings of Deaf children as well as offering community classes onsite and in other locations, including schools.

We also offer Little ACEs for children birth to school age, weekly classes led by a certified Deaf educator and an adult Deaf language model and monthly, in-home visits from a Deaf Mentor. If your child is diagnosed with hearing loss, we can match you with other families who have chosen hearing aids, cochlear implants, or cultural deafness as well as many modes of communication so that you can make an informed choice for your child's well-being and so that you are surrounded with support from day one.

American Sign Language is not a visual form of English. The two languages are not related.