The Cluas Programme

The Cluas Programme has been developed over the past ten years by Pascal Maher, founder and Clinical Director of Cluas, and Ronan Maher, Programme Director of Cluas. The programme is provided at the Cluas Centres. We opened the first centre in Dublin in 2003 and in early 2011 we opened our centre in Cork.

Over 800 children, teenagers and adults have successfully completed programmes at Cluas. The centres are open all year, including school holidays and children’s programmes start every three weeks. Information about our centre based approach, including the normal programme structure and length, the times of the day that the programme takes place, and how progress is monitored and reviewed with parents is available at Our Centre Based Approach.

Hearing and Listening

Hearing and listening are not the same! We hear sounds around us all the time but we do not always listen.

Listening is the ability to tune into selected sounds, process the sound and understand what the sounds mean. Listening is an active process compared to hearing which is a passive.

Many young people, with a range of developmental difficulties ranging from reading and difficulties to Speech and language difficulties to problems making friends and learning well in the classroom are poor listeners. Their poor listening is due to Auditory Processing Difficulties.

Auditory Processing Difficulties describe a set of difficulties in the way that individuals process sound – that is “what they do with what they hear”.

At Cluas we work with children’s auditory processing difficulties in order to improve their Speech and Language, reading and comprehension abilities, attention and concentration, and social difficulties to name but a few.

What is The Cluas Programme?

At the core of the Cluas programme is a unique system of sound stimulation – our programme uses sound (music, human voice, nursery rhymes etc) in order to retrain and improve a young person’s auditory processing skills. We use specialised sound equipment, to retrain the way the children gather and process information.

In brief our programme “tunes” (like tuning a radio) young people’s ears and develops their auditory processing, so that they receive, process and understand all types of information in a significantly more efficient way. This process of retraining the way in which children process information facilitates, encourages and accelerates children’s development in a wide range of areas, including speech and language, the written word, social information and also the ability to filter out un-needed information (thus being able to pay good attention in class or at home).

Individualized Programme for each child

At Cluas we provide an individualised sound stimulation programmes for each child using our specialised sound equipment and we use specially recorded and modified classical music and, if appropriate, the young person’s own voice and also a recording of the mother’s voice. The mother’s voice is the first language stimulation that a child receives, and allows for the desire for communication to develop. Some children – specifically those with speech and language difficulties – did not get the fulvl developmental benefit of this initial language stimulation. As part of our programme, with certain children, we can retrace this important developmental step by using a recording of the mother’s voice.

Depending on each individual child’s needs specific music will be played through our sound equipment, which processes and alters various acoustic parameters of the music. The music is delivered to each child using a unique pair of headphones. The specialised headphones deliver the music through two modalities, that of Air Conduction and Bone Conduction.

We use specific music which is processed in order to stimulate the development of speech and language, communication, vestibular and cochlear systems and general neural development. The music is an essential part of the programme, but of greatest importance is how we process this music – through a complex system of  “gates”, “filters” and “channels” – to promote the child’s development.

The Cluas programme is extensive, with each programme devised to suit the unique needs of each young person; the programme is also constantly reviewed and re-attuned to the young person’s changing needs. This necessitates the programme being provided by our specialist staff at the Cluas Centres, using the supporting sound equipment.

Mother’s Voice

A child’s mother’s voice is the first language stimulation that a child receives. This allows for the desire for communication to develop. Some children did not get the full developmental benefit of this initial language stimulation (due to their ears being under developed). As part of our programme, with certain children, we can retrace this important developmental step by using a recording of the mother’s voice.

Active work / microphone work

Microphone work can also play an important part of the programmes that we offer. At the appropriate point in a child’s programme we start using a microphone with the child. The child speaks into the microphone, their voice is then processed by the our specialised sound equipment (in much the same way as the music is processed) and is then ‘delivered’ to the child through their headphones. This encourages child to listen to their own voice in a different way, bringing their awareness to their voice and allowing for good vocal control to develop.

During the microphone work children will often start to self correct the speech sounds that they are making (that is, a child may say “gar” for “car” but when they are using the microphone they hear that have actually made a “g” sound rather than a “c” sound and we often notice the child then attempting to make the correct sound). Thus they become aware of the need to pay more attention to the precise sounds they are making and gradually their speech becomes clearer and better formed.

More information about our centre based approach, including the normal programme structure and length, the times of the day that the programme takes place, and how progress is monitored and reviewed with parents is available at Our Centre Based Approach.

Also, more information on how parents arrange for an assessment for their child and how to arrange a programme at Cluas is provided at How can we help?