Children’s Hearing and Hearing Aid Service
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Children’s Hearing and Hearing Aid Service
The children’s (‘paediatric’) service is for children of all ages and young persons who have suspected hearing problems.
For routine assessment, a child may need to be initially seen by the standard (‘second tier’) paediatric service close to them. However, if more complex care or hearing aid care is needed, we offer this to any borough from where we receive referral for the specialist service. (Note: for some boroughs, hearing aid provision and care is restricted to that borough’s paediatric audiology provider). The majority of referrals to our service are received from Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton, Lambeth, Kingston and Surrey boroughs.
We also offer supra-specialist (both paediatric audiovestibular physician- and audiologist-led clinics) services. Children who may require the supra-specialist services include those with:
- Complex needs
- A permanent hearing loss who require aetiological investigation to establish a possible cause
- Balance or dizziness concerns
- Children who have been unable to be assessed by community audiology services
- Children who need cochlear implants (insert link to CI page)
Appointments are offered at Lanesborough Wing, St George’s Hospital as well as at Trevelyan House and Tooting Health Centre. Please see Clinic Locations.
Ensuring a high-quality service:
Local and national protocols (rules that specify how things should be done) are closely followed with several audits (checks) in place to ensure we adhere to the protocols. Quality of the service is further maintained through active participation in regional peer review groups (where professionals from other services look at each other’s work to make sure that protocols are being followed correctly).
The team:
Our immediate clinical team includes audiologists (healthcare scientists who specialise in testing of hearing and balance and hearing aids to manage hearing loss) and audiovestibular physicians (doctors who specialise in investigation, diagnosing and managing hearing and balance disorders). The team works closely with other professionals to ensure we offer a fully comprehensive service specifically tailored to the individual child’s needs, such as:
- ENT (ear, nose and throat) colleagues if an operation is an option to help with the hearing loss for conditions such as glue ear.
- Teachers of the Deaf
- The Auditory Implant Service
- Speech and Language Therapists
Hearing tests:
Age-appropriate hearing tests are carried out and include:
- Objective hearing tests that tests how well the ear and hearing nerve works. The child does not need to do anything to show that they heard a sound
- Behavioural hearing tests where the child’s response to sound is recorded. This can be a startle or a head turn for younger children or the child needing to move a toy (play a game) or press a button when they hear a sound.
More information on the tests is available in NDCS – Understanding your child’s hearing tests.
Finding out the cause of the hearing loss:
If indicated, investigations are also offered to establish the cause of the hearing loss. These are called ‘aetiological’ investigations. The NDCS – Understanding your child’s hearing tests explains what types of investigations can be done to find out the cause of a hearing loss.
Hearing aids:
Where the fitting of hearing aids is required, a range of hearing aids are offered, according to the child or young person’s needs. Follow-up care is provided for as long as needed.
For hearing aid aftercare, repairs and provision of parts (batteries, tubing, etc.) please contact the department as follows:
Complete the form: St George’s Child/Young Person Hearing Aid Users Request Form
Email: Audiologist.Enquiries@stgeorges.nhs.uk
Tel: 020 8725 1151 (voicemail)