The National Deaf Children’s Society is delighted the Scottish Labour Party yesterday unanimously passed a motion pledging crucial support to deaf children during their early years.
If deafness is not identified early enough, deaf children may miss out on vital early language development, the opportunity to learn British Sign Language (BSL) from a young age or the chance to have a hearing aid or implant fitted. This can have a lifelong impact on the ability of deaf children to communicate.
The National Deaf Children’s Society wants to ensure no deaf child in Scotland waits more than six weeks from referral to audiology to getting a hearing test, as set out in the current Scottish Quality standards for Paediatric Audiology. However, in some parts of Scotland the average wait time can be a year.
Welcoming the support of the Scottish Labour Party, Mark Ballard, the National Deaf Children’s Society’s Head of Policy and Influencing for Scotland, said: “If we fail to get paediatric audiology services right for deaf children when deafness is first identified we then risk failing deaf children for life.
“Because of the delays some families face, we can end up with the shocking scenario where children who might have benefited from using hearing aids from the very earliest years miss out simply because of delays in testing and treatment.
“Unfortunately, opportunities to learn language in this vital period of development once missed cannot be reversed.”
Scottish Labour councillor Ben Smith (Paisley Northwest, Renfrewshire), who put forward the motion, said: “We were all shocked learn how deaf children were failed by audiology services at NHS Lothian.
“This cannot be allowed to happen again. Waiting times for deaf children to access audiology testing and treatment are still too long. Early support is crucial to help deaf children thrive.
“Scottish Labour is proud to support deaf children and young people in Scotland.”
Mr Ballard added: “Every deaf child should get the high-quality support they need from the earliest years. We need robust quality assurance mechanism to make sure there can be no more scandals like NHS Lothian.
“With the right support deaf children can get best opportunities to develop language skills and should be able to make informed choices around hearing aids, implants and learning BSL.”