Next year...

As we near our centenary in 2011 we have been looking at how we can respond to the challenges we face, including an ageing population where more than 70% of people over 70 will have hearing loss, more families opting for cochlear implants, a noisier world. We have completed a six-month review of our strategy resulting in a new vision and new priorities to take us into the future.

One thing that really struck those involved in the review was the need to encourage people to value their hearing more and to take action to protect and preserve their hearing.

We believe the new RNID strategy is challenging and exciting and has the potential to impact significantly on society as a whole in generations to come

To reflect the shift in focus we have amended our organisational vision statement:

Our vision is of a world where deafness or hearing loss do not limit or determine opportunity, and where people value their hearing.

In working towards achievement of this vision, RNID’s activities over the next five years will revolve around three strategic themes:

1. Ensuring the rights and opportunities for deaf and hard of hearing people to lead a full life.
2. Promoting hearing health, preventing hearing loss, curing deafness.
3. Removing the stigma of deafness.

We are now concerned with everyone’s hearing, not just those who are losing or have lost their hearing. We are focusing on the UK’s 60 million people who have an interest in hearing or communicating well. In many ways this represents a return to our roots as an organisation whose founding principles were always to encourage prevention as well as mitigation of deafness and hearing loss.

RNID has been very successful in campaigning for better treatment and services and in delivering improved access to employment, audiology provision, residential and community care, education, aids to living, transport and leisure. We have become experts in hearing and hearing loss and its impact on people’s ability to communicate. We will continue with this high quality and innovative work where there is a need for our services to ensure deaf and hard of hearing people have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.

However, we will now also have a greater focus on the prevention of deafness and encouraging people to value their hearing. We need to persuade millions of people that they should value their hearing more and that they can take action to protect and preserve it. Only by doing this will people also understand and respect the problems faced by those who are losing or have lost their hearing.

Advances in technology and biomedical research have already informed us of some of the common causes of deafness and hearing loss and have opened real possibilities of finding new treatments and cures. But more needs to be done if this revolution in scientific understanding can lead to real breakthroughs in treatments and cures for age related hearing loss. We intend to increase our spend on research significantly. There is also the opportunity therefore to prevent the isolation that is commonly symptomatic of hearing loss through modern technology and better communication support.

RNID is the largest organisation in the UK for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and our ambition is to use that position to create a network of individuals and organisations – voluntary, public and private sector – to build a movement to change the world and its attitude to hearing and the impact of hearing loss. We cannot deliver change alone. We will continue to work in partnership with others and to draw from the support of many generous people.