- Aim: Drive the Department of Health (DH) action plan to ensure the standard 18-week waiting time target from referral to assessment for a hearing aid is met and consistent with RNID’s vision for a locally accessible service.
- Impact: DH has introduced a six-week target from referral to assessment for a hearing aid and through our campaigning and lobbying work, the average time people have to wait for an assessment has fallen dramatically with most areas meeting the six-week target.
However, this still leaves many people waiting to have their hearing aid fitted. An 18-week target from referral to fitting is due to be in place for December 2008 and we continue to work to ensure quality of the service is maintained and that the 18-week target is met.
- Aim: Ensure equitable access to cochlear implants across the UK by 2010 by driving through reform of the commissioning system and launch campaign to end the ‘postcode lottery’ for cochlear implants.
- Impact: We have been actively involved in the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) consultation about the availability of cochlear implants and to ensure they are routinely available to adults and children who could clinically benefit from them and wish to have one.
Our commissioning guidance has helped inform commissioners on the benefits of the procedure and how they can be best commissioned. We have also directly helped individuals get access to a cochlear implant whose commissioners refused to fund them.
We have undertaken new research on parents’ perceptions of bilateral cochlear implants to ensure informed choice.
NICE has now published its guidance. Primary Care Trusts can no longer refuse to fund implants for children and adults who need and want them.
- Aim: Lobby the government to support and fund the Access to Communication in English (ACE) report’s key recommendations by March 2008 to increase the number and quality of language service professionals (LSPs).
- Impact: We have continued to work with the ACE coalition to push the government towards improved access to and availability of LSPs. Further progress is dependent on accessing sustainable funding streams.
- Aim: The above aim and impact is available in BSL
- Impact: You should be seeing a video here instead of this text. Please visit the Macromedia site to get the Flash Video Player.
- Aim: Secure funding in Northern Ireland for British Sign Language (BSL) and Irish Sign Language (ISL) interpreter and tutor training courses from the Department of Employment and Learning by December 2007.
- Impact: Funding was secured for an introductory training course to run from January to December 2008. Further funding of £1.3m has been secured to develop longer term training courses in interpreting and tutor training from March 2009 to March 2012 under Department of Employment and Learning Spending Plans. £250,000 has been secured for promotion of the languages and access to public services for sign language users under the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure.
- Aim: The above aim and impact is available in BSL
- Impact: You should be seeing a video here instead of this text. Please visit the Macromedia site to get the Flash Video Player.
- Aim: Increase public awareness of tinnitus and of the support available to manage the condition. Secure 100 million opportunities to see information and reach 130,000 people through a top-quality information service.
- Impact: We achieved more than 300 million media opportunities to see information about our tinnitus work.
Our website www.tuneouttinnitus.org.uk, launched in July 2007, has so far been visited by around 47,000 visitors. We also answered 3,497 Tinnitus Helpline enquiries and distributed 4,000 copies of our magazine Tinnitus Focus to audiologists and other professionals who support people with tinnitus.
We distributed more than 136,000 leaflets about tinnitus through various channels throughout the UK, including GP surgeries and audiology clinics. We held two successful study days for audiologists and hearing therapists to share research methods and results.
- Aim: Successfully integrate the Early Years Support Programme into the new National Children's Centre’s Programme with 75% of local authorities in England using the early support framework by March 2008.
- Impact: We secured £980,000 to facilitate smooth transition to the Aiming High for Disabled Children programme. The programme is now integrated as the standard approach for early years across local authority programmes throughout the country. It is also being looked at as a model for other early years services in other countries.
- Aim: Publish guidance on early years services covering all aspects of deafness and hearing loss.
- Impact: Guidance has been delayed due to major changes in early years framework and will now be published later this year once changes have been accounted for.
- Aim: Actively promote safer listening messages by ensuring that 250,000 people take action to protect their hearing. Promote safer listening messages to nightclub customers by building strategic partnerships with 25 nightclubs in the UK.
- Impact: We reached more than 250,000 people by distributing more than 95,000 pairs of earplugs at festivals, club nights and other events, achieving more than 26,000 page views per month to our website www.dontlosethemusic.com. We send out 1,700 eNewsletters per month, promoting safer listening messages.
We have worked directly with a wide variety of nightclubs - including London clubs Ministry of Sound and Heaven - and DJ Magazine to raise awareness of earplugs and tinnitus among clubbers.
- Aim: Ensure older people take action and check their hearing by promoting the health benefits that hearing aids can bring. Enable one million extra people to be fitted with hearing aids within five years.
- Impact: We recruited Miss England, who is profoundly deaf in her right ear, to launch RNID's ‘Ear of the Year’ awards, encouraging people to look after their hearing.
To date, more than 375,000 people have checked their hearing by calling our telephone hearing check.
We generated more than 48 million media opportunities to see the hearing check number and campaign messages.
- Aim: Ensure the entertainment industry fully complies with the new Noise at Work regulations by March 2008 ensuring that everyone has a safe working environment.
- Impact: The government has delayed the publication of its compliance guidance Sound Advice. In the meantime, we are working with entertainment venues such as bars and nightclubs, including the Luminar chain of night clubs, with information about their duties towards their employees.
- Aim: Ensure that abolition of the Hearing Aid Council does not lead to a drop in either service quality or trading standards for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Impact: The Hearing Aid Council is due to be abolished in April 2009. We are working with the professional body to develop a clear code of conduct for hearing aid dispensers and a complaints process to strengthen private patients' opportunity for redress.
- Aim: Lever radical change in statutory community equipment services by securing funding to develop new models of service delivery to be copied nationally.
- Impact: As part of a government working group, we supported the development and piloting of a new way of delivering community equipment services through retail. We provided the specifications for the sensory products which have now been included in the National Product Catalogue, from which local authorities select appropriate products to meet the needs of their client groups.
Jim's story
Jim’s life revolves around music. Since visiting the RNID tent at the Latitude festival, he has become more and more aware of the importance of protecting his hearing. He is now investing in a pair of custom made ear plugs to ensure he doesn’t lose the music he loves.
“I’m very grateful to the Don’t Lose The Music campaign. I have always thought I’ve been good with looking after [my hearing], but I scored 6 out of 10. I made the decision …to improve that score.” Jim
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Did you know...
4,000
copies of our magazine Tinnitus Focus were distributed.