Information for Participating Professionals

Introduction

This is an exciting time for important new research to be conducted with babies that have been newly identified as having a hearing loss and their families. New and substantial changes in Health, Education and Social Care policy concerning services for deaf children and their families have been effected and implementation of these policies is well advanced, led by the introduction of the Newborn Hearing Screening Programme (NHSP), the Modernising Children’s Hearing Aid Services (MCHAS) and the DfES funded programme ‘Early Support’ (ES). This is giving rise to significantly earlier identification of deaf children than ever before, followed by early support initiatives for babies, infants and their families.

However, we have not had a full understanding of the links between what happens after identification of deafness and outcomes in later life; that is, we have not had a robust evidence base upon which to make recommendations to families and their support services about the type and extent of support which works best for individual deaf children.

The Big Lottery Fund Grant

To address this, the Big Lottery Fund gave a £500,000 grant to a group of organisations for the “Positive support in the lives of deaf children and their families” research project. The research group is a collaboration between the University of Manchester, University College London (UCL), Deafness Research UK (the Hearing Research Trust) and the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS).

 A unique opportunity exists to capitalise on the current implementation of the NHSP to monitor key outcomes for deaf children in the first few years of life and their families and to relate these to the details of specific interventions. The key outcomes currently being monitored are language, communication, play and social behaviour and motor and physical development, using the parent-led Monitoring Protocol (ESMP) developed as part of the DfES programme ‘Early Support’. Also, the study aims to measure the type and extent of support and intervention, including family functioning, and to relate these to outcomes. From this we hope to be able to disseminate more robust information upon which parents may make informed choices and services may base their improvements in provision so that early development is likely to be optimal and the social exclusion of deaf children reduced. It is also possible that the research will lead to the later development of a national database of outcomes for deaf children and their families that can be used as a valuable resource for families and professionals.