Jackie Ashley, daughter of the late deaf politician and campaigner Lord Jack Ashley, has written an article for the Guardian today about the long-term effects of how some parts of the NHS are now planning to refuse people hearing aids.
Extract:
A decent hearing aid is such a small thing. Cochlear implants cost more but can keep somebody in work or out of hospital – or both – for more than a decade. You can see by now where this is all going: step forward the North Staffordshire clinical commissioning group. It decided to withdraw NHS-funded hearing aids for people with mild to moderate adult-onset hearing loss across a range of towns, until apublic outcry made it put the plans on hold until after the election.
Read the full article here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/09/hearing-aids-health-policy-austerity-nhs?CMP=share_btn_tw
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cadiche
February 10, 2015
“Until after the election”…. I have come to learn that this means you will not get the answer you do not like until then. Australian government are also famous for this. Very sad that we have to beg and plead for the right to hear. I am profoundly Deaf.
pennybsl
February 10, 2015
It is good to see an Ashley article in the mainstream media.
However, the real issue is that all the campaigning and awareness concerning deafness and hearing loss in the past three decades have not eradicated attitudes within decision-making bodies.
There is no format, no mechanism available to test such attitudes – which breach every aspect of the Equality Act and Health/Safety values – to prevent such processes creating more barriers for people who wish to wear hearing aids / CIs.
We should not be paying National Insurance at all if the process to delete hearing aids from the NHS happens.
It is a shameful fact that the UK still has the old-fashioned baggage within such psyches who think they could feign ignorance of the implications of their ‘cost-effectiveness’ agenda with us deafies in the 21st century.