Education: Hearing Impairment

(asked on 28th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to (a) develop early-intervention strategies to ensure that deaf children do not fall behind in education and (b) include the funding of auditory verbal therapy in those strategies.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 7th February 2022

The department is firmly committed to ensuring that children with special education needs and disabilities (SEND), including those with hearing impairments, receive the support they need to achieve in their early years, at school and college.

The early years foundation stage statutory framework states that all early years providers must have arrangements in place to support children with SEND. We provide multiple sources of funding to support early years providers to deliver the free entitlements to children with SEND.

The Disability Access Fund is worth £615 per eligible child per year. In addition, local authorities must establish a SEN Inclusion Fund to work with providers to address the needs of individual children with SEN. The Early Years National Funding Formula also contains an additional needs element to take account of the number of 3- and 4-year-old children with additional needs in an area.

The government recognises that the current SEND system, established through the Children and Families Act 2014, does not consistently deliver for children and young people with SEND, their families or the people and services who support them. The SEND Review is seeking to improve the outcomes and experience of all children and young people with SEND, within a sustainable system. The Review will publish as a green paper for full public consultation in the first three months of this year.

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