The Specialist Teacher Advisory Service for deaf children visit the child and family (from birth to 19 years of age) and offer support and advice. They support the child into an appropriate education setting and offer ongoing assistance and guidance.

The Sensory Team, within social care, undertake Hard of Hearing Assessments and offer advice, support and access to communication aids and equipment. Any service provision will be arranged to address the needs identified during the child's assessment.

When the young person approaches adulthood, i.e. 16 years of age, he/she will be referred to the Specialist Deaf Services Team who provide a range of services and will continue working with them into adulthood. The services offered include peer mentoring, specialist support workers, advocacy; advice, communication aids and equipment. All workers providing services for this team will be proficient at British Sign Language.

An integral part of the support that we provide to deaf children is through our specialist workers in the Connexions Service. Through Section 139a Moving On Plan, a Connexions Personal Adviser provides support to the young person through any further education and into employment.

Throughout the Children's Services Department, in partnership with Health and Schools, we have developed the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) which provides a Lead Professional and a team approach around the child. Deaf children access this service.

Where a child/young person has another disability it may be more appropriate for their services to be arranged through the specialist Disabled Children's Team social workers. In these cases, advice will be sought from the Sensory Team, or in some cases there will be joint working arrangements.

Hampshire County Council has also met the Readiness Criteria for the Aiming High for Disabled Children programme. Since January 2008, we have been consulting with the parents of disabled young people to provide improved access to Short Breaks and better information assessment, transparency, feedback and information. Our Short Breaks Commissioning Strategy has an emphasis on:

Targeted support without an assessment for young people in Hampshire special schools or for pupils receiving Higher Rate DLA and attending mainstream schools

The development of a Information and Participation Hub within each Children's Services area that will enable a wider range of Short Breaks, access to Advocacy and peer support to be provided to the families of deaf children