Freephone Helpline

The NDCS Freephone Helpline is the only national helpline for families of deaf children in the UK.

Click to view a summary of the services provided by the NDCS Freephone Helpline as a subtitled BSL video clip.  

We provide clear, balanced information and support for families of deaf children, and professionals working with families.

We provide information on:

• Childhood deafness, including newborn hearing screening, hearing loss, hearing aids, cochlear implants and bone anchored hearing aids
• Communication and parenting
• Education for deaf children
• Benefits and financial support for families with deaf children
• Equipment for deaf children
• Information about other NDCS services

We also provide support through our specialist advisers:

• Our Audiology Adviser can provide information on, and advice about, your child's deafness, hearing aids, cochlear implant and health services.
• Our Technology Adviser can provide information and advice on equipment for deaf children (for example, equipment to help with watching the television, or to help children at school).
• Our Regional and Family Officers are regionally based and can offer one-to-one support to families on a range of issues including education and financial issues

Please contact the Helpline to find out when the advisers are available. 

Call our Freephone Helpline (voice and text) on 0808 800 8880 between 9.30am and 5.00pm, Monday to Friday.  You can also contact us online.

Freephone means that that your call is free if you call us from a landline or a mobile phone using the Virgin, O2, Orange, 3, Vodafone or T-Mobile networks.

Minicom calls to the Freephone Helpline have to be transferred to a text telephone. If you do not get an immediate response please do not hang up.

Our Helpline operators should be able to reply to you within approximately 30 seconds of the call being picked up.

If you prefer to talk to us in a spoken language other than English, call the Freephone Helpline number and tell us:

• the name of your language (for example Urdu or Sylheti)
• your telephone number in English
• your name

We will ring you back in a few minutes with an interpreter from Language Line.

If you are a professional contacting us to order publications, and you do not need to speak to the Helpline, it is helpful if you email helpline@ndcs.org.uk with your order and full postal address. This leaves the Helpline telephone available for families to get through to us.

The NDCS Freephone Helpline was accredited to the Telephone Helplines Association (THA) Quality Standard in April 2006. We are the only telephone helpline in the field of deafness to have achieved it so far. The THA Quality Standard contains sets of criteria, many of which are based around the process of the call itself. It also places great emphasis on review, monitoring and evaluation to try and ensure that those helplines accredited to the THA Quality Standard are committed to on-going improvement. 

In 2005, our Helpline won two national awards - a THA/BT award for Innovation in Measuring Impact, and the BMA 'highly commended' award for patient information on the internet.

Members of the Helpline team sometimes listen in to each other’s calls for training purposes. This allows us to make sure that you are receiving a high standard of customer service. All of our Helpline staff members are bound by our confidentiality policy, but if you are not happy for another member of the team to listen in to your call, please let us know when you phone us.