Studies exploring the effects of early intervention on the development of young deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children have highlighted several important issues that should be taken into consideration in the design of early intervention programs to achieve optimal development. This chapter describes how the Israeli preschool co-enrollment system has been adapted to meet the multifaceted challenges of integrating preschool DHH children into regular educational environments during the very sensitive developmental period of early childhood. The first section describes the history of preschool co-enrollment classes in Israel and then discusses the unique challenges to DHH interventions in early childhood. The second section presents the preschool educational system for DHH children in Israel and the design and implementation of a range of preschool co-enrollment models.
