Hearing Impairment Support in Northumberland

Hearing Impairment Support in Northumberland

Hearing loss may be diagnosed in children at birth via the Newborn Hearing Screening Programme, or at any other point in their early life or school years. Permanent Deafness affects 1-2 in every thousand children in the UK, with temporary deafness caused by middle ear problems affecting many more. It is diagnosed by health professionals, usually at the Freeman Hospital. If your child’s hearing loss is not identified at birth, you will need to have it fully assessed there.

The Northumberland Hearing Impairment Team supports the educational needs of children and young people from birth to 25 years who have a significant hearing impairment. The vast majority of hearing impaired learners are independent and do well in school and adult life with varying levels of support, dependent on need.

Children with hearing loss and additional needs will have support available from a range of other services in addition to those listed below. These services are easy to access through the Early Help Assessment process.

This guide was written to help you quickly find support in Northumberland. It does not list everything that is available but it does tell you how to get in touch with people who will help you find what you need.

More information about all the help you can expect can be found on the Northumberland Local Offer:

Where to start

If your child is pre-school age and has a hearing loss these people will help you:

For school age children the main starting point is at school, although you may also find ongoing/ one off help from the following:

Where you ask for help depends upon the choices you have made about education, employment or training:

If you are still in learning or training and have an Education Health and Care Plan you may continue to receive help from the local authority – please contact the careers guidance team. If you are unemployed, in employment, at university or in school/college without an EHC plan these are your contacts:

Other sources of independent information

• NDCS (National Deaf Children’s Society) T: 0808 800 8880
• Action on Hearing Loss T: 0808 808 0123
• LA independent advice and support service T: 01670 623555

Data report

Hearing Impairment is one of the categories of Special Educational need and Disability identified in the new SEND Code of Practice 2014.

The Code is the statutory guide for education, care and health when supporting people aged 0-25 years.

Every local authority and local NHS bodies must have a jointly developed plan for meeting the needs of those with SEND.

A diagnosis of any degree of hearing impairment must be made by a trained medical professional.

Sensory Support Service Northumberland receives referrals for Northumberland children and young people largely from the Audiology Assessment Centre at Freeman Hospital in Newcastle. Referral pathways are clear, with prescribed response times agreed by Health/Education services.

Recent data:

In 2013 the government reformed the education funding system. The new policy is that all SEND learners who require less than £6000 per year additional support shall be considered ‘school support’. Those with higher levels of need who require more than £6000 per year of additional support are called ‘High Needs’. Decisions about degrees of need for hearing impaired children and young people are made on an individual basis, reflecting their ability to learn within a classroom. There is no concrete rule that e.g severe/profoundly deaf students are ‘high need’, and those with lesser degrees of loss are not.

Northumberland has/supports the following education provision for HI learners. The table names the provision with the number of HI learners supported in 2014-2015 in brackets: