Deaf children to showcase literacy skills at Westminster event

The children, aged seven to 16, are winners of Auditory Verbal UK’s (AVUK) creative writing competition and will be reading out their short stories, poems and diary entries at the charity’s Power of Speech event at Westminster on 14 June. 

The performances aim to highlight the children’s potential in literacy, gained through the support they have received through AVUK’s auditory verbal therapy programme, compared with the levels of deaf children generally. 

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They also aim to challenge public perceptions that deaf children cannot speak as well as hearing children, after a YouGov survey found that more than a third of adults have no idea that a child born profoundly deaf can learn to listen and speak as well as a hearing child. 

AVUK chief executive Anita Grover said: “Our amazing competition winners show what deaf children can do. Early support should be available for all deaf children whether their parents choose to communicate with spoken language, sign language or a combination of the two. We want to enable all families who wish their child to develop spoken language to have the opportunity to access an Auditory Verbal programme through publicly funded services.” 

Current figures from AVUK show that some 85 per cent of deaf children who have completed AVUK’s specialist parent-coaching programme, designed to teach deaf children to listen and speak, achieved or exceeded the national standard for reading at Key Stage 1, compared with 50 per cent of all deaf children. 

More research on the literacy outcomes being achieved by deaf children following the specialist programme will be launched at the event, according to AVUK.

Despite research from the charity showing that four out of five children who attend AVUK for two years achieve the same spoken language outcomes as hearing children, just eight per cent of 7,200 deaf children in the UK have access to this support. 

The charity’s #HearUsNow campaign launched earlier this year, calls on MPs and organisations to back investment to make auditory verbal therapy available to all deaf children. 

Grover said: “At AVUK, we want to see a world where all deaf children have the same opportunities in life as hearing children. 

“There are approximately 7,200 deaf children under the age of five in the UK who currently face the prospect of lower academic achievement, lower employment, and are at higher risk of poor mental health, bullying and social exclusion. But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

“When children and families have access to effective, early support, deaf children can get an equal start at school and opportunities are transformed. This is critically important whether a child uses sign language, spoken language or a combination of the two. There is not one approach that works for all families of deaf children.” 

Callum Herholdt, aged seven, Alana Burton, nine, Khush Gopal 11, Jasper Loten, 14, Ava Pearson, 15 and Lauren Press, 16, will be seen performing their winning entries at Power of Speech, which was postponed for 12 months due to the outbreak of Covid-19.