17th November 2025
The independent “Kingdon review of children’s hearing services: final report” was published last week – commissioned following the identification of a series of failures in the screening and care of deaf children. The review findings reveal systemic failures across the NHS and Department of Health, that left hundreds of babies and children with undiagnosed hearing problems, causing lifelong developmental harm.
In common with health visiting, childhood audiology has been described as a ‘Cinderella service’ (in other words, services that are often overlooked, undervalued and underfunded); with quality concerns repeatedly ignored, the service struggled with serious underfunding, endemic workforce issues, and inadequately trained staff became the norm.
The review, led by Dr Camilla Kingdon (consultant neonatologist and former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health), was commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in April 2025, to review the response of NHS England to service failures in children’s hearing services and to make recommendations for improvement.
Dr Camilla Kingdon said:
“The programme has not been set up for success. It has not had the power to mandate regional structures or integrated care boards (ICBs) to initiate incident response processes and has operated with fewer staffing and budget resources than that requested by its senior responsible owner (SRO). It has therefore not been able to deliver improvements to children’s hearing services at the same time as co-ordinating a national review and recall programme, despite admirable efforts made by individual members of staff.”
Alison Morton, iHV CEO, was an expert contributor to the review. In response to the report, Alison said:
“The findings of the Kingdon Review are deeply concerning – and provide a serious ‘wake-up call’ to everyone delivering child health and development screening and support services. I thank Dr Kingdon for her detailed and thoughtful review which shines a light on the normalisation of sub-standard care – this cannot be the level of care that we tolerate for our children.
“Too many babies, children and families are being let down by services that are not equipped to deliver good quality care or meet the scale of need. My thoughts are with those affected by these failures from a service that should have protected them.
“At the iHV, we believe in a better future and that change is possible! We will continue our work with partners to push for high-quality child health services for all – and we won’t stop!”
The Kingdon Review makes twelve recommendations – these ensure that the NHS understands the scale of the problems which have been caused, place children’s hearing services on a secure footing for the future, and apply the lessons from these failings to other similar services. We welcome these recommendations and join with others in calling for their full and speedy implementation.
