Health resources
View our range of resources for audiologists and other health professionals on supporting deaf children.
NHS England have worked with the National Deaf Children’s Society, SeeAbility, and Contact to produce a series of three guides for families on hearing checks, eye checks and dental checks for children with a learning disability, autism or both. The NHS Long Term Plan aims to improve children’s health by making sure they get the right health checks at the right time. The guides are written for families to help explain why these health checks are important, how they are done, how to access them and how they can prepare their child for the checks.
Download A Parents’ Guide to hearing care for children with a learning disability, autism or both
Download A Parents’ Guide to eye care for children with a learning disability, autism or both
Visit SeeAbility. They provide specialist support, accommodation and eye care help for people with learning disabilities, autism and sight loss.
Download A Parents’ Guide to oral health and dental care for children with a learning disability, autism or both
Visit Contact. A website for families with disabled children.
Find out more about NHS plans to improve services for children with learning disabilities, autism or both.
Find out more about eye, dental and hearing checks in special residential schools.
Read the results of our surveys to children's audiology services on the support they provide to deaf children and their families.
In 2019 NHS England and NHS Improvement published new Guidance for Children’s Hearing Services Working Groups (CHSWGs). This guidance was written by us with the involvement of families from across England.
We have also developed an audit tool to help them monitor how well they are doing implementing the new guidance. Download both documents below.
In November 2015 we interviewed 10 audiology services in England that have achieved IQIPS (Improving Quality in Physiological Services) accreditation and asked them about their experiences. The booklet gives an insight into the accreditation process, tips and advice for services thinking about starting IQIPS accreditation, and what they felt the benefits were of accreditation to their service.
Download 'Lessons from accredited paediatric audiology services'
We’ve produced guidance for audiologists who write reports for external agencies about the needs of individual deaf children. This includes reports to inform Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans, as well as assessments for Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
The My Life, My Health campaign, developed by our Young People's Advisory Board, aims to improve deaf young people's experiences of health services. A range of resources were developed for the campaign including:
Our briefing provides an introduction to some of the issues and challenges that deaf young people face in moving to adult hearing services. It will be helpful to all practitioners working with deaf young people.
Download the 'Transition to adult hearing services' briefing
We’ve produced guidance for those responsible for commissioning audiology services for teenagers and young adults. It highlights the key differences between paediatric and adult audiology care, and the main challenges deaf young people meet when transitioning between services.
Download 'Commissioning audiology services for young adults'
Who are health visitors and what do they do?
Find out how health visitors support children and families in this infographic produced by the Institute of Health Visitors
Factsheets for health visitors
We worked with the Institute of Health Visiting (IHV) to create two factsheets which set out good practice on working with families where hearing loss is a) suspected or b) confirmed. These factsheets can be downloaded from the IHV website:
- Working with families when a hearing loss is confirmed
- Working with families when a hearing loss is suspected
Factsheets for parents
The Institute of Health Visiting have also produced factsheets to share with parents:
Resources produced in collaboration with the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.
Separately, the Royal College has worked with BATOD to produce new guidance on collaborative working.
Over to you was a Department of Health funded project that aimed to improve and record deaf children and young people’s experiences of audiology services.
The documents in this section are provided for reference purposes only. They are no longer up to date.
- Quality Standards in Transition from Paediatric to Adult Audiology (2011)
- Quality Standards in Bone-Anchored Hearing Aids for Children and Young People (2010)
- Quality Standards: Vision care for deaf children and young people (2009)
- Quality Standards in Paediatric Audiology: Guidelines for the early identification and audiological management of children with hearing loss (2000)
Resources produced by other organisations for audiologists and other health professionals working with deaf children.