8 in 10 children’s hearing services struggle to review hearing aid fittings on time as charity calls for new ‘specialist advisor’

Eight in 10 paediatric audiology services in England have reported challenges in reviewing children fitted with hearing aids at a time agreed with their family, a survey of 114 NHS trusts by the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) has revealed.

Freedom of Information requests were to 124 trusts in the country in spring last year, as part of the charity’s ongoing ‘Listen Up’ campaign around children’s hearing services, with NDCS finding evidence of “long waiting lists, staffing issues, increasing demands on services […] and other resource or funding issues”.

The charity also found that instead of seeing children at the agreed time, children were being seen 62.5 days later on average.

While 98% of services which responded to NDCS’s enquiries met the 28-day target to see babies referred from the NHS Newborn Hearing Screening programme, almost 40% of services failed to meet the 42-day target for an initial assessment of babies and children who were not referred to them through the screening programme.

Elsewhere, just over a half of respondents (52%) confirmed their NHS trusts were missing the 18-week or 126-day target for carrying out grommets surgery – an increase of almost a quarter (23%) since 2019.

The average wait time now stands at around 25 weeks, or 178 days, with the maximum wait being 540 days – almost a year and a half.

Samantha Lear, audiology policy advisor at the charity, said: “These issues can lead to serious consequences for deaf children, such as falling behind at school, or feeling isolated if they can’t join in with their friends.”

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The Listen Up report also revealed a continued fall in permanent staff working in paediatric audiology, from the equivalent of 897 full-time employees (FTE) in 2019 to 717 last year.

More than half of services reported an increase in the number of children who require complex assessment techniques or more than one appointment, with a rise in referrals of children with tinnitus and/or hyperacusis (noise sensitivity), and autistic traits.

Ms Lear added: “We know that many audiology departments are working extremely hard to try and tackle these challenges, but they can’t do it all alone.

“So we’re asking NHS England to appoint a new specialist advisor for audiology, and they must also ensure services are meeting quality standards, such as those published by the British Academy of Audiology (BAA) and others.”

It comes as NDCS says the BAA’s standards are “not published or even endorsed” by NHS England, while only 26 services (23%) said they had the Improving Quality in Physiological Services (IQIPS) accreditation managed by the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS).

Meanwhile, the charity claimed it is not clear who currently has oversight for paediatric audiology in England and it is “not designated at either ministerial or NHS directorate level”.

NDCS added their proposed new role would “provide clinical leadership, develop systems for collection of robust data and a programme of quality assurance and accountability”.

The full Listen Up 2022 report is available to read online on NDCS’s website.

Photo: Matthijs/Flickr.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.