Hearing Impairment: Children

(asked on 18th October 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to train up to 300 therapists to specialise in the auditory verbal approach for non-hearing children.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 24th October 2023

Audiology services are locally commissioned and responsibility for meeting the needs of non-hearing children lies with local National Health Service commissioners.

‘Commissioning Services for People with Hearing Loss: A Framework for Clinical Commissioning Groups’ was published in July 2016. This framework supports clinical commissioning groups, and now integrated care boards, to make informed decisions about what is good value for the populations they serve and to provide more consistent, high quality, integrated care. It also addresses inequalities in access and outcomes between hearing services.

There are currently no plans to assess the accessibility of Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT) for non-hearing children. There are also no discussions planned between the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the potential merits of allocating funding for AVT, or to provide specific investment in training AV therapists. However, we recognise the need to improve access to therapies generally. Since September 2020, all eligible nursing, midwifery, and allied health profession students have received a non-repayable training grant of a minimum of £5,000 per academic year. Additional funding is also available for studying certain courses, for example, Mental Health Nursing and Learning Disabilities Nursing, with further financial support available to students for childcare, dual accommodation costs and travel.

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