Conclusion and recommendations

For deaf children and young people, the ability to communicate effectively with their parents/carers, peers, and external environment is a key factor in expressing their thoughts, opinions and emotions. Language and listening skills have also proved fundamental in attainment and educational outcomes as well as playing an important part in mental health, behavioural and emotional issues, as well as the early identification of these issues and implementation of appropriate support.

Currently the outcomes for deaf children are demonstrating that they are not developing  spoken language skills on a par with their hearing peers, despite the significant investment in early identification and state of the art hearing technology. Something is missing.

Auditory Verbal therapy has a robust, peer-reviewed evidence base for producing excellent outcomes in listening and spoken language for deaf children, transforming outcomes and opportunities. However, over 90% of families, who want their child to learn to listen and talk, are unable to access an Auditory Verbal therapist across the UK.

To allow all families of deaf children to have the option of accessing an Auditory Verbal therapy programme, via public services, close to where they live, investment is needed to train a small proportion of the existing workforce of speech and language therapists, teachers of the deaf and audiologists in this approach.