Inquiry told of sell-off fears
PARENTS fear care for deaf babies will suffer if government-funded hearing services are sold off.
The Federal Government has investigated privatising Australian Hearing but has not released a 2014 scoping study by the finance department.
Aussie Deaf Kids chief executive Ann Porter told a Senate inquiry yesterday that discovering your newborn was deaf was incredibly challenging and would be more stressful without the support of Australian Hearing.
“I can’t tell you how difficult it is to absorb,” she said. “It just leaves you rudderless.”
She fears privatisation will fragment care and leave stressed parents fumbling through the system alone.
Advocacy group Parents of Deaf Children put in a Freedom of Information request for the privatisation study but was told most of it was confidential.
The May Federal Budget deferred the privatisation plans to allow for more community consultation. Care for deaf babies in Australia is among the best in the world.
Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children chief executive Chris Rehn says privatisation could be risky and unsustainable, given Australian Hearing was “built around market failure and the need for government to intervene”.
There are concerns that private providers, motivated by profits, could centralise services, disadvantaging rural and remote patients, or scrap services or equipment deemed expensive or challenging.
The inquiry also heard many audiologists are paid incentives by hearing aid companies to use their products.
Independent Audiologists Australia said the industry was unregulated, with no way for the public to find out who was qualified or not.
Executive officer Louise Collingridge said many audiology businesses were driven by product sales targets and industry regulation was needed. But government ownership of hearing services was outdated and unnecessary, she said.
The inquiry report is due by June next year. MUSIC-LOVING Lacey Karoustadis is living, smiling proof of the life-changing effects cochlear implants provide the hearing-impaired.
Like her older sister Mia, Lacey was diagnosed with profound hearing loss during infancy.
But thanks to surgery and the ongoing work of pediatric audiologists like Andrea Lovatt at Hobart’s Australian Hearing Centre, the sevenyear-old is now thriving at school and in life.
The girls’ mother Jacinta said the cochlear implant technology — which was surgically implanted when the girls were still infants — had not only helped Mia and Lacey’s comprehension skills but had aided their speech development as well.
“When the girls heard for the first time it was very emotional, it was amazing,” Ms Karoustadis said.
“Without the implants, the girls would not be able to hear at all, so it has enabled them to go to a mainstream school, communicate with their peers and have a normal family life.”
A new Australian Hearing Centre in Hobart was officially opened recently by the federal Human Services Minister Marise Payne. It offers free hearing services to children and young adults, pensioners, veterans, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
Ms Lovatt said all Australian babies now received a hearing screen in the first few days of life.
The aim was to have hearing impairments diagnosed by three months, hearing aids fitted by six months, and if problems continued, to have implant surgery by nine months.
Ms Lovatt said the implants, which operate using 24 sensors