AQW 19851/22-27
Miss Nuala McAllister
Alliance Party
North Belfast
Tabled Date: 12/12/2024
Answered On Date: 08/01/2025
Priority Written: No
Question:
To ask the Minister of Health to detail any plans his Department has to ensure all deaf children have the opportunity to access early, effective support to develop language and communication in the early years, including Auditory Verbal therapy.
Answer:
There are around 1,700 deaf children in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland has one of the best Newborn Hearing Screening Programmes in the world and this state-of-the-art hearing technology (mainly hearing aids and cochlear implants) is available to babies and young children across NI. Each year approximately 500 babies have a positive hearing test who require referral for diagnostic tests by 3 months of age. About half the incidence of childhood deafness is known to be attributed to genetic causes. Deafness can be inherited, meaning it’s passed down in families, even where there appears to be no family history of deafness due to gene variants. However, some gene variants which cause deafness can also arise for the first time in a child, meaning there’s a genetic reason, but it’s not inherited from a parent. It is estimated that approximately 90% of deaf children come from families with no direct experience of deafness but the gene variant passed to them has resulted in deafness. A cochlear implant is an electronic system that stimulates the hearing nerve directly. It can give a sensation of sound to profoundly deaf children and adults who have been unable to hear using the most powerful hearing aids available. After cochlear implants have been fitted, children and adults can learn about the sounds around them and develop their listening and spoken language skills over time, in line with their communication potential. The implant team in Belfast Trust is multidisciplinary, involving people from many different specialist areas. These people include the Consultant Audio vestibular Physician, Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) Surgeons, Audiologists, Speech and Language Therapists, Teachers of the Deaf and Clinical Psychologists. AVUK offers specialised training for the HSC and other professionals to improve and, according to their letter, benefits of Auditory Verbal therapy (AVT) are clear. They state that approximately 80% of children who attend AVUK’s Auditory Verbal Programme for at least two years achieve the same level of spoken language as their hearing peers, rising to 97% of children without additional needs. With the majority of these children attending mainstream schools and attaining educational outcomes on a par with hearing children. SPPG has reached out to clinical colleagues for some initial input on Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT) for non-hearing children and while they have suggested that there is a lack of well-controlled studies addressing the use of AVT, they have also suggested that this would not necessarily suggest AVT may be an ineffective intervention in the habilitation of children with cochlear implants. Therefore, more information is required but this will be reviewed/agreed by clinicians in due course. AVUK therapy is not a currently commissioned service within Northern Ireland.
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