Category: Childlife Info
Posted on 16.06.2021
The National Deaf Children’s Society is dedicated to creating a world without barriers for deaf children and young people.
We work to overcome the social and educational barriers that hold deaf children back, by:
- helping families give the best possible support to their deaf child every step of the way
- ensuring the needs of deaf children and young people come first
- giving expert unbiased support to help deaf children and their parents make informed choices about their lives
- positively challenging unfairness, and influencing key decision-makers to make deaf children and young people a political priority.
The Covid-19 pandemic meant that face to face delivery of our services was not possible over the course of the year. By pivoting and adapting our work we were able to continue to respond to the needs of deaf children and provide vital support and advice. This included:
- delivering over 100 family online events via webinar, reaching over 2,100 parents of deaf children.
- adapting our Family Sign Language training for online delivery, reaching over 200 people with our online courses and with nearly 30,000 views of our new Family Sign Language online videos.
- answering over 3,200 calls, emails and live chat messages via our Helpline.
- influencing the Government to ensure deaf children and young people are considered in pandemic response work, including campaigning for the use of clear face masks and online learning which is accessible.
- launching Your Community – a place for parents to find online support from other parents.
- introducing a new pen pals programme which helped more than 200 deaf young people stay connected during the pandemic.
Childlife supporters help to make this possible. Thank you.
Ben is Head of Supporter Marketing at the Childlife member charity, the National Deaf Children’s Society.