CIICA CONVERSATION: ADULTS WITH CI: THE IMPACT ON THE FAMILY

TUESDAY 27TH JANUARY 2026

Summary of the conversation available here. 

When a person is deaf, there is an impact on the family and often when an adult receives an implant, there is an impact on the family too. This conversation provided an opportunity for family members to contribute too. It began with Nikki Philpott sharing the results of her survey of family members, illustrating the impact that deafness and CI had on them.

Zala Tomasic, a Member of the European Parliament and daughter of CI user Darja Pajk, member of the CIICA Board,  shared movingly the impact of deafness in the family on other members, and the change made by CI at our CI advocacy in Action Conference:

Having a cochlear implant is not just a medical change. It changes your life, your family life, it changes your confidence, it changes what you as a person dare to do and what you are afraid of and what not. It is one of the most powerful technologies.

 

See Nikki’s presentation on the topic here: https://ciicanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Nikki-Philpott_Towards-personalized-adult-CI-services_QoL.pdf

Led by Kris English, USA, Nikki Philpott, Audiologist, Netherlands, Darja Pajk, CI User and Board of CIICA, Slovenia, her daughter Zana van de Langkruis, Psychologist, Netherlands,  and Robert Mandara, Finland,with other adult CI users, this topic is an important one which has emerged in other conversations. 21 Attendees from 8 countries: 10 users of CI; 2 audiologists (2 of whom also CI users), ENT, family members, industry.   Live captioning was provided. Participants were from Belgium, Canada, Finland, Netherlands, Serbia, Slovenia, UK and USA

Kris welcomed everyone, provided some Housekeeping notes and encouraged attendees to also introduce themselves via the chat room. The Conversation began with Nikki Philpott presenting her research, Towards personalised adult CI services, followed by Robert’s discussion of the impact HL and CI had made on his family life, with his wife, and then by Darja and Zana sharing the impact of HL and CI in an adult on her children. We have only done light editing for this conversation and leave much of the contributions in full to give the depth of the discussion.

Summary of the conversation available here.