Children's Hearing Services Working Groups (CHSWGs)

Groups for parents, carers and professionals working together to improve local services for deaf children

What are CHSWGs?

Children’s Hearing Services Working Groups (CHSWGs) are groups of parents and professionals who work with deaf children and young people. They meet regularly to help improve health, education and social care services for deaf children, young people and their families.

There are 136 CHSWGs across the UK. Typically:

• Groups meet three or four times per year.
• They have 10 to 15 members (depending on the geographical size of the area). 
• Meetings last about two hours.
• Meetings take place during the day, though a few do take place during the evening to enable more parents to attend.
• A chair steers each meeting through a prepared agenda.
• Groups use action plans that help them to work on priorities for their local area.

Each group member - also known as a representative or 'rep' - has the opportunity to share their views, feedback on any progress made, raise issues that are affecting deaf children and young people, and provide the voice of parents.

Who can attend meetings

Parents, carers and deaf young people

Parents, carers and young people, we warmly welcome you to attend as you are perfectly placed to gather feedback from other families about local services for deaf children. These can be shared with your local CHSWG to help shape the support for deaf children and families in your area.

Professionals

If you support deaf children and their families, CHSWGs offer you the opportunity to work together with parents to help shape services. You will play a key role in making sure that families and deaf young people have a voice at your CHSWG.

How you can get involved

For information on how you can get involved, contact our Local Engagement staff. 

They can support you to get involved with CHSWGs in a variety of ways:

• Introduce you to your local CHSWG meeting chair and other members.
• Answer any CHSWG-related questions you may have ahead of attending your first meeting.
• Support you throughout your involvement.
• Provide access to helpful workshops and resources.

Email at [email protected] to find out more.

Join your local group: become a CHSWG representative (rep)

CHSWG group members are known as 'reps'. Email [email protected] for more information about becoming a rep.

Find your nearest CHSWG

To find your local CHSWG you can:

• email [email protected] who can introduce you
• locate it on our Deaf Education Map.

The Deaf Education Map is designed to show you what’s happening with education services for deaf children where you live.

Read more about the map and the different ways you can use it.

How we support CHSWGs

Our Local Engagement staff represent us at CHSWGs. We: 

• Support parents, deaf young people and professionals to be effective partners in their local CHSWG.

• Ensure deaf children, young people and their families’ voices are heard and acted upon in service development.

• Help to assure the quality of services through gathering and analysing data, and monitoring provision. 

• Share information and best practice to inform and plan how services are delivered. 

• Offer advice, guidance and challenge to ensure high quality services are available and accessible. 

• Help to identify inequalities in service provision and address them through joint problem solving. 

• Make recommendations to inform and influence operational and strategic decisions. 

• Work together to safeguard deaf children and young people.

This helps groups to engage effectively with local services and service users, and coordinate and improve the services that deaf children and young people receive.

Resources for CHSWGs and current members

• Poster highlighting findings for education (63kb | PDF)

• Poster highlighting findings for audiology (50kb | PDF)

• Involving deaf young people in CHSWGs – finding ways for young people to tell services about their experience of education audiology, work and careers. Template survey for capturing young people’s views (Word)
• Moving On Survey Highlights for CHSWGs (PDF)
  
  
• National Deaf Children’s Society briefing for CHSWGs (England):National Paediatric Hearing Services Improvement Programme (PDF)
• CHSWG Chairs Guide (2024)​(PDF)
• Promotional leaflets for groups - add your local group's details and give one of the leaflets below to parents to encourage them to join: ​
  Promotional leaflet for groups - England (PDF)
  Promotional leaflet for groups - Wales (Welsh language PDF)
  Promotional leaflet for groups - Wales (English language PDF) 
  Promotional leaflet for groups - Scotland (PDF)
• Audit tool (PDF)

Action plans

• Service-specific CHSWG action plan (Word document download): CHSWGs can use this to separate their actions across each service area, e.g. education, speech and language.

• Cross-cutting priorities CHSWG action plan (Excel document download): CHSWGs can use this to integrate thematic actions across different services e.g. early identification, parent engagement.
  
  
• Strategic CHSWG action plan (Word or Excel document download): these can be used for a strategic CHSWG, where services are working over a larger footprint, e.g. four local authorities and two health trusts with local CHSWGs feeding into the strategic group.

Facebook Group for reps

If you're already attending meetings and would like to link with other parent reps via social media, then there is a dedicated Facebook page run by parents that you can ask to join.

Contact us

If you have any questions about CHSWGs or want to find out more about them, email [email protected].