Quality standards for habilitation of young deaf children receiving
cochlear implants
The main objective of the VOICE-project is to offer vocational education
and training for speech and language therapists (SLP) and parents for
teaching children with cochlear implants (CI) how to speak. One of the
aims is also to identify guidelines for good practice that will help service
providers to maintain and improve their standards and quality service
provision for young deaf children receiving cochlear implants.
Methods
To develop these quality standards we used the input from the interviews of 11 local experts from the 4 partner countries, on good habilitation in daily practice and on the outcomes of a systematic review of 848 publications retrieved from 6 databases: Pub Med, Psych Info, CINAHL, Scopus, Eric and Cochrane. Based on all this information, we created a list of 32 quality standards over 4 domains: general quality standards, quality standards on fitting, quality standards on habilitation, quality standards for staff. Further on, the Delphi method approach was used by 18 international habilitation specialists to discuss and agree on these quality standards. Finally > 90% of the international experts agreed on 28 quality standards, of which most of them contain some subcategories.
Results
These quality standards on habilitation of young deaf children receiving cochlear implants propose the optimal provision of young deaf children receiving cochlear implants: the expertise necessary for their staff and describe important facilities and resources that CI-teams should possess or have access to. They focus on different aspects of habilitation: the multidisciplinary team, their expertise and knowledge, important habilitation topics to focus on, programming issues related to habilitation, etc. This set of quality standards for habilitation of young children receiving CI’s can help health care systems and more specific the CI-teams to provide comprehensive and state-of-the-art post-operative care for young deaf children receiving cochlear implants. By using these quality standards, they will be able to improve their quality service provision for young deaf children receiving cochlear implants, which will result in better outcomes.
Publication of the article
YOUNG DEAF CHILDREN RECEIVING COCHLEAR IMPLANTS:QUALITY STANDARDS FOR THEIR REHABILITATION
with the methodology and the results of the work done by the VOICE project partnership for the development of the Quality Standards for rehabilitation of deaf children receiving CI’s.
The article was published in the Journal of CICS-UK, Bits & Pieces, March 2023 (Cochlear Implanted Children’s Support Group – CICS, https://www.cicsgroup.org.uk).
CICS-article-in-bits-pieces-quality-standards-on-rehab-Voice-project-March-23