Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will develop a national strategy for specialist health services for the deaf.

Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for commissioning services for deaf and deafblind people with acquired neurological impairments to meet the needs of their local populations. The CCG’s decisions are based on clinical insight and knowledge of local healthcare needs.

To support this, the commissioning of accredited services is considered good practice and NHS England encourages it. Audiology services are making good progress towards accreditation. The Royal College of Physicians and the United Kingdom Accreditation Service are recording and monitoring the number of services that are registering for and working towards accreditation as well as those services that are achieving accreditation. The numbers in these categories is increasing.

The Improving Quality in Physiological Services programme is raising the profile of accreditation and quality assurance schemes for physiological diagnostic services. A mapping exercise is underway by NHS England to identify those services that are accredited or working towards accreditation.