Personal profiles
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A deaf young person (or older deaf child) can create their own personal profile
A personal profile is a summary document of all the most important information about your son or daughter which can be shared with anyone caring for them or working with them so they can support your child in the best way possible.
Personal profiles (sometimes called personal passports) aren’t just for school, college, university or work – they can be useful in other situations like sports clubs and health appointments.
If your child is happy to, we normally suggest that they fill in the personal profile themselves. It’s a good way to encourage them to be more independent and to think about their own needs. If your child doesn’t want to create their own profile, you could suggest you work on it together.
Tips on helping your child create a personal profile
- Encourage them to be as exact and detailed as possible. For example, instead of ‘I need to take regular breaks’ they could say ‘I need to take a five minute break for every hour of listening’.
- Make sure they don't say more than they need to – explain that the really important information might get missed if they write too much.
- Remind them to update it at least once a year. The start of a new school or college year is a good time as their new teachers/tutors and classmates might not be as deaf aware as you'd both like them to be.
- Suggest they don’t include information that is too personal in case it means they don't want to share the profile with many people. They can tell a member of staff this information in a different way (e.g. face-to-face or in a letter) that will be more private.
- Encourage them to create different passports for different situations. What they tell their teachers/tutors might be very different to what their sports coach needs to know. They can read an example of a personal passport created for a football club here.
Tips on using our templates
- You'll need Microsoft Word to be able to fill in the templates, and Adobe Reader to be able to download the examples.
- The grey text in square brackets are just suggestions for what your child might want to say.
- The idea is for them to delete the existing text and replace with whatever they want.
- The size of the boxes can be increased easily (the rest of the content will just shift down the page) so your child can give as much information as they need to.
- The section headings can be changed, and sections added or deleted. The template is just a starting point which your child can change to suit their needs.
- They can also change the font size, colour, style etc. of the text in each section to make it more personal.