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Ddeaf Facts

"Statistics are people with the tears wiped from their eyes." Anonymous

Welcome to the ‘Ddeaf Facts’ page. Here you'll find facts and figures on Ddeafness:

• general facts about Ddeafness
• Ddeaf people in the UK
• Ddeaf people and employment
• Tinnitus
• Ddeaf people and mental health
• Ddeaf people in Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire

Did you know?

• Nearly 15% of the population have some degree of deafness. For every 10,000 people:

• 10 will be born profoundly deaf and get little or no benefit from hearing aids and mainly use sign language to communicate
• 20 will have become profoundly deaf. They may use Sign Language and probably also lip-read
• 100 will be partially deaf. They may have difficulty following what is being said, even with hearing aids. Mostly they will lip-read and some use sign language as well
• 600 will be hard of hearing. They will be able to follow what is being said with a hearing aid and will be able to use a telephone if it has an adjustable volume or has been designed to be used with a hearing aid
• 800 will be mildly hard of hearing. They may have difficulty following conversations particularly in large groups or in noisy situations Some will wear hearing aids and many find lip-reading helpful.

• British Sign Language (BSL) is the first or preferred language of around 70,000 people in the UK.
• About 2 million people in Britain wear hearing aids, maybe another million would benefit from doing so.
• Almost all deaf and hard of hearing people rely on lip-reading to some extent.
• Many combine signs from BSL with English in order to communicate.

Information from UKCOD (www.deafcouncil.org.uk/daw/quick.htm)

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Ddeaf people in the UK

• There are estimated to be around 9 million Ddeaf people in the UK
• 1 in 7 people in Britain have a hearing loss. About 698,000 of these are severely or profoundly Ddeaf.
• 450,000 severely or profoundly Ddeaf people cannot hear well enough to use a voice telephone, even with equipment to make it louder.
• There are more than 30,000 Ddeaf children and young people in the UK
• There are estimated to be 123,000 deafened people in the UK
• There are about 23,000 deafblind people in the UK
• A high proportion of severely or profoundly Ddeaf people have other disabilities as well. In those under 60, 45% have additional disabilities – over 60 years, 77% have some additional disability

Ddeaf People and Employment

• About 5.5 million people of working age are Ddeaf
• Ddeaf people are less likely to be in employment – 69% of Ddeaf people of working age are in employment compared to 81% of people in the general population
• Ddeaf people have an unemployment rate of 19% - four times the national average for people in the general population
• Nearly a third of Ddeaf people in full time work earn under £10,000 per year compared to 12% of the UK general population

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Tinnitus

• 470,000 people have tinnitus that has a severe effect on their quality of life
• 230,000 people have tinnitus which has a severe effect on their ability to lead a normal life

Source: RNID (www.rnid.org.uk)

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Ddeafness and mental health

• 40% of Ddeaf people as opposed to 25% of hearing people have a mental health problem at some point in their life
• Ddeaf people are frequently mis–diagnosed, often labeled as having learning difficulties. Many are assessed by people with whom they are unable to communicate
• 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents – 8 out of ten of whom never learn to effectively communicate with their child. This can lead to problems with social and emotional development
• On average, profoundly deaf children leave school with an average reading age of eight, not because they are unintelligent, but because deafness is still a barrier to learning
• A disproportionate number of deaf children end up in local authority care and are often moved between many different foster homes. There are very few deaf foster carers in the UK and deaf children can easily be marginalised by hearing society. They are often linguistically patronised by adults, who oversimplify their language, and they are at greater risk from bullying
• There are virtually no specialist educational services for children who are both profoundly deaf and extremely disturbed. Of 20,000 deaf children in the UK, around 8,000 will develop some kind of mental health problem, of which 10% will need some kind of residential treatment
• There are deaf individuals for whom experiences associated with deafness are so damaging that they reach adult life with many social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. They suffer loss of confidence, low self-esteem, embarrassment, withdrawal and dependency on others, resulting in limited lifestyles and opportunities
• A number find themselves marginalised with attempts to fit them into existing, often inappropriate, services. Further secondary effects are under-stimulation, frustration, behavioural problems, inappropriate behaviour and dependency, as well as isolation

Source: SIGN (www.signcharity.org.uk)

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Ddeaf People in Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire

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