Last year, NDCS carried out a survey of deaf young people to ask about their mental health and emotional wellbeing. We included some questions from the Good Childhood Index to allow us to make some cautious comparisons between deaf and hearing children.

A summary of the findings can be found at: https://www.ndcs.org.uk/media/8503/emotional-well-being-survey-of-deaf-children-and-young-people_2022.pdf

A summary of the key findings is shown below:

•  In the past year, 66.4% of deaf CYP wanted or needed help with their mental health, compared to 22.7% who did not. A total of 60.9% of deaf CYP received the help they needed, but 23.6% did not.
• 62.8% of the deaf CYP we surveyed had ‘high’ well-being according to an overall life satisfaction metric developed by the Good Childhood Index (The Children’s Society, 2010). This is lower than the proportion of CYP (81.9%.) with ‘high’ well-being in The Good Childhood Report (2022).
• Deaf CYP are most happy with family, with 58.6% either happy or very happy with this aspect of their lives. Other aspects showing a high happiness rating in deaf CYP were life as a whole (57.3%), money and things owned (53.2%), time use (51.8%), and friends (50.9%).
• Over a quarter (26.6%) of the deaf CYP we surveyed had ‘low’ well-being according to the Good Childhood Index, in contrast to just 11.6% of CYP in The Good Childhood Report (2022).
• Deaf CYP are most dissatisfied with choice in life (33.2%), followed by appearance (30.5%), health (30.5%), and the future (30.0%).
• Deaf CYP and the CYP surveyed in The Good Childhood Report (2022) show a noticeable difference in their level of dissatisfaction for choice and appearance.