External research

Here you can find out about research projects that are being conducted in the field of childhood deafness.

Lead organisation: University of Manchester

Funding body: National Deaf Children's Society

Lead researchers: Kai Uus, Alys Young, Marianne Day

Purpose of research:
This research project concerns parents of children who were screened through the national newborn hearing screening programme in England (http://hearing.screening.nhs.uk/) and who subsequently were told that their child had an ANSD.

Although ANSD is not a new condition it is one that thanks to newborn hearing screening is now routinely detected at an early age. As such, it is a diagnosis which is becoming much more commonplace. Therefore new questions and challenges arise about how best to support parents in making sense of the implications of ANSD for their particular child. It cannot simply be assumed that what we know about parents with deaf children will hold true for parents with a child with ANSD.

For professionals who routinely have formed parts of the early intervention matrix for families with deaf children, ANSD is likely to be largely unknown territory that stretches the boundaries of their experience and expertise.

In this context, the National Deaf Children’s Society in the UK commissioned a piece of research that set out to ask families, who had been told their child had ANSD following routine hearing screening, about their experiences. They discussed what had happened to them, their hopes and fears, their coping mechanisms and their advice to professionals and other families who find themselves facing similar challenges in the future. The results of this study are an important missing piece in helping to move forward the agenda of what counts as good practice in supporting families whose children have an ANSD and in setting the agenda for future research and intervention studies.

Lead organisation: University of Oxford

Funding body: National Deaf Children's Society

Lead researchers:  Professor Terezinha Nunes, Dr Diana Burman, Mrs Deborah Evans

Pupose of research: 
To promote deaf children’s literacy by:

(1) developing and maintaining a portal (linked to the NCDS website) which will disseminate information to parents and teachers on research about and innovative approaches to deaf children’s education;

(2) developing educational games that children can access through this portal and collect data on their use throughout two years;

(3) developing new forms of family-school partnerships in order to support deaf children’s literacy and numeracy learning, with a focus on the resources made available to them at the portal. The intention is to:

• create a web-based national centre in order to disseminate research and new approaches to the education of deaf children, with particular emphasis on literacy and numeracy teaching;

• foster primary school deaf children’s literacy and numeracy skills by empowering families through knowledge and access to resources that can be used in the home;

• develop new approaches to strengthening the home-school partnership in the education of deaf children;

• create an interactive web-space for deaf children to develop their own cognitive resources through educational games.

Lead organisation: University of Durham

Funding body: National Deaf Children's Society

Purpose of research:
To further knowledge of the attainment and progress of deaf pupils in primary and secondary schools by analysing the large data sets already gathered by Curriculum Evaluation and Management Centre on the educational attainments of deaf children relative to hearing children from start of school to secondary school.

The 1039 deaf students on the database at 1998 will now be in secondary school. The research will look at their progress identifying those who have made good and less good progress and investigate what factors have contributed to this.

It will look at gender, age at starting school, whether parents are deaf, cochlear implants, transition from primary to secondary school, age at which deafness was identified and practice in schools where progress has been good.

Contact: alison.lawson@ndcs.org.uk

Lead organisation: University of Manchester

Main funding body: National Deaf Children's Society

Purpose of project:
The results of this study would be a major contribution to our understanding of what parents of deaf children with complex needs want from services and of the barriers and drivers families experience in achieving optimum service delivery. This would form the basis of guidance and positive practice to be developed for use by professionals and families.

You can download the report Complex needs, complex challenges here.

Contact: pauline.walker@ndcs.org.uk

Lead organisation: The University of Manchester, Social Work Research Unit

Main funding body: National Deaf Children's Society

Lead Researcher: Prof Alys Young

Purpose of project:
To assess the impact of integrated service provision into the scope, quality and delivery of social care services for deaf children and their families.  This research is interested in whether the changes in service planning, organisation and delivery structures created benefits and opportunities for supporting deaf children and their families, (including the better recognition of vulnerability and risk), or whether decisions that Local Authorities were making about how to structure children’ services were creating barriers for deaf children and their families.

Progress to date:
This research project has been completed. You can read the Executive Summary (for both phase 1 and phase 2) here:
Social care report exec summary FINAL (61 kb)

You can download the final reports for phase 1 and phase 2 of the research here:
University of Manchester Report Phase 1 (2429 kb)
University of Manchester Report Phase 2 (228 kb)

A power point presentation about the research can be found here:
The impact on deaf children and their families of changing structures of social care provision (363 kb)

Contactt: alys.young@manchester.ac.uk or ros.hunt@manchester.ac.uk or carole.smith@manchester.ac.uk.

Lead organisation: University of Manchester: School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work.

Lead researchers: Alys Young, Lorraine Green, Katherine Rogers.

Abstract:
The theoretical frameworks encompassed by resilience have scarcely been applied to an understanding of the experiences of deaf children and their families, nor to specific interventions in relation to this group.

This article critically reviews mainstream (i.e. non-deaf-related) resilience literature to analyse its intersection with the concerns of the deafness field. In particular, it focuses on: the implications of failing to account for the social construction of outcomes-orientated definitions of resilience given the medical, social and cultural definitions of what it is to be deaf; difficulties associated with the perception of deafness as a risk factor; problems that arise through the individualization of resilience in the contexts of deafness and disability; the potential reframing of resilience as navigation through the experience of being deaf in worlds that fail to accommodate and/or actively deny that experience; the extent to which resilience-related psychosocial factors are different or differently achieved in the case of deaf children; and how the analysis of the small corpus of resilience specific work with deaf children and families might reveal the direction of further empirical study.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Contact: Alys Young at alys.young@manchester.ac.uk.

Download 'Resilience and deaf children - current knowledge and future directions' by Alys Young, Lorraine Green, and Katherine Rogers: Microsoft Word - resilience_june_072.doc (204 kb)

Lead organisation: University of Edinburgh

Funding Body: National Deaf Children's Society

Purpose of research: 
To assess the impact of the Additional Support for Learning (Scotland) Act  2005  has had on educational provision for children who are deaf or have a hearing impairment and whether the new planning mechanisms are sufficiently robust to ensure that deaf and hearing impaired children are able to access high quality education regardless of geographical location?

Sub-questions include the following: Why does it appear that fewer deaf and hearing impaired children are being identified as having additional support needs since the introduction of the new legislation? What types of educational planning mechanisms are used for deaf and hearing impaired children in different parts of Scotland? How are assessments of difficulties and needs conducted and how do these vary by local authority? How are decisions made on additional support and how do these decisions vary by local authority? Are the available routes of redress sufficient to ensure that the rights of deaf and hearing impaired children and their parents are being met?

Read the full report or the executive summary.

You can also read the briefing to the research, or to find out more about this research cick  here.

Contact: jan.savage@ndcs.org.uk

Lead organisation: Ear Foundation

Funding body: National Deaf Children's Society

Purpose of project:
To research parental satisfaction with post cochlear implant support and highlight areas where parents would most like to see service improvements.

Download the final report here.

Lead organisation: University of Manchester

Main funding body: Big Lottery Fund

Purpose of project:
The aim was to help families, service providers and policy makers to understand the effectiveness of the different types of support available.

Final report:

The final report, and other related resources, can be found on the Positive Support website.