An innovative four-year project to help families, service providers and
policy
makers understand the effectiveness of the different types of support
available
for young deaf children has come to an end, with some interesting
findings.
Positive Support in the lives of Deaf Children and their Families was a
research
project funded by the Big Lottery Fund via a partnership with Deafness
Research
UK. 'Positive Support' builds on an opportunity presented by the
introduction of
the NHS Newborn Hearing Screening Programme in 2002 resulting in many
changes to
the services available for deaf children and their families. Children with
permanent hearing loss are now identified significantly earlier than
before the
programme was introduced, meaning that families are facing many important
life
issues while their child is still very young. 82 families from across the
UK
provided the research team with information, via several questionnaires,
on
their thoughts and feelings about the services available for young deaf
children. In addition, each family nominated three professionals, such as
their
Teacher of the Deaf, to complete a set of questionnaires on their views.
Measures of the children's development were also collected at regular
intervals
throughout the study.
This large and complex study found that the use of sign language in the
early
months and years of a deaf child's life did not impede the development of
spoken
language; that greater collaborative working is needed between
audiologists and
teachers of the deaf to maximise benefit to deaf children from
amplification;
and, importantly, there is an association between earlier identification
of
deafness (within the first six months) and improved developmental
performance.
Ade Deane-Pratt, Research Communications Manager for Deafness Research UK,
said:
"This important research will have a significant impact on service
provision for
deaf children and their families in the future. The unique multi-level
partnership we have been involved in here - between research teams,
funders and
parent groups - is one of the areas in which Deafness Research UK achieves
best
value from funding sources and will make a real and positive difference to
the
lives of people in local communities.
Professor John Bamford, who led the research team at the University of
Manchester, said "Our results show that on average, deaf children's
performance
is somewhat delayed compared with typical hearing children, although there
is
considerable variability. However, when service providers adapted to
parental
requests to allow additional time for single case management we saw a high
level
of satisfaction from the families".
The project has also created two new tools which will be made available
beyond
the life of the project. The MacArthur Bates CDI has been validated and
standardised in BSL and Deafness Research UK will be collaborating in its
publication. A parent report measure for assessing the quality of early
intervention services (the MVOS - My Views on Services) has already been
published. Data and research publications from these and other parts of
the
study will be available in the coming months. See the project website at
www.positivesupport for details.
The study was conducted in conjunction with University College London
(UCL) and
the National Deaf Children's Society.
Source
Deafness Research UK