Patsy Burns doesn't want her son to leave, but she has no choice. After every weekend, Burns has to put her 8-year-old son on a bus and send him to school in Pittsburgh.

Burns' son has been traveling to Pittsburgh from his Centre County home every week for three years because he is hearing-impaired. There are no facilities in the area that can provide for him.

The problems facing hearing-impaired children are rarely addressed, and the plight of their parents is often ignored.

That is why the Friends of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing approached University faculty members to provide a support group for parents of deaf and hard-of-hearing children last fall, said Ann Sidone, a communication disorders instructor.

Sidone said she thinks the rural locale of the area surrounding the University makes raising hearing-impaired children more difficult than usual.

"It's been a real problem in this community that there are very few adult deaf role models," Sidone said. "Parents who have deaf children can get to feeling really isolated."

Claire Nelson and her family moved to State College and encountered many problems regarding her hearing-impaired daughter.

"The difficulty here is it's a small population and the individual needs of the child, especially in the school district, tend to be overlooked," Nelson said. "A lot of times the schools don't look at the child as an individual."

Karen Parrish of Bellefonte, a parent of a hearing-impaired teen-ager, agreed.

"It's really hard to find information, to know where to go to get help," Parrish said.

Because Parrish has already gone through the experience, she hopes to help other families raise their children.

"We wanted to be able to pass on a lot of the stuff that we've learned the hard way," she said.

Nelson also said information is not readily available for parents of deaf children.

"The real tough parts have been getting information specifically to children," Nelson said. "It's very fragmented."

Although the support group is very young, everyone involved is optimistic and it has gotten an overwhelming initial response from parents, Sidone said.

The group has also offered students a unique opportunity to learn through the Project Serve option within the College of Health and Human Development.

The option allows students to receive one credit for an internship that helps the group, said Caroline Mann (junior-elementary education).

Finding out how parents deal with "bringing a deaf child into the hearing world" has been an interesting experience, Mann said.

Teri Stanley (graduate-rehabilitation counseling), one of the students facilitating the group, is excited about it.

"It's something that they really want and feel that there's really a need for it," Stanley said. "The parents seem very enthused."