Hearing Loss Prevention Project – Final Report
Hearing Loss Prevention Project – Final Report Report
- Author(s): Damien Howard
- Published: 2013
- Publisher: Department of Health, Office of Hearing Services
Abstract: Ear disease and hearing loss is endemic among Indigenous children and contributes to preventable hearing loss that all too often has a lifelong impact. Ear disease is most prevalent during the ages young children attend childcare and there is a potential for childcare workers to help prompt early treatment of ear disease. Unfortunately, there is little awareness of ear disease and hearing loss among workers in the childcare sector. Greater awareness among child care workers about ear disease and hearing loss, as well as their causes, has the potential to prompt more and earlier interventions to treat ear disease. This early treatment may assist to prevent ear disease becoming a persistent condition that all too often leads to permanent hearing loss. This project aimed to foster greater early treatment of ear disease as well as minimise adverse communication outcomes of hearing loss among young children. In order to refer children for treatment there needs to be an awareness of which children are likely to have a current hearing loss. This project identified behavioural indicators in childcare of young children’s hearing loss to help childcare workers prompt early referral. As well as general behavioural indicators being identified, additional age specific indicators were also developed after feedback from workers in the sector that this was needed.