Jeremy Balfour: S6M-08219: Ensuring that Lothian Late-diagnosed Deaf Children Get the Support That They Need - That the Parliament notes the belief that every child affected by the failings identified in the 2021 audit of NHS Lothian’s paediatric audiology service, carried out by the British Academy of Audiology (BAA), must get the support that they need to thrive and to overcome any additional barriers that they face due to the failings identified in the report; understands that the audit did not include children seen later than 2018, which, it considers, means that there were further years until any failings were addressed by an action plan, and that there may be many more children who were not diagnosed in a timely manner; recognises that the key stages for fluent first language development are birth to three years old; understands that the BAA report found that the average age of identification of deafness was 4.5 years for children in the NHS Lothian area, which, it understands, is far longer than comparable figures in the rest of the UK; considers that the failings identified in NHS Lothian’s paediatric audiology service will mean that many of the affected children were diagnosed after this critical period and are therefore likely to experience a significant adverse impact on their language and communications development, potentially leaving such children with more complex needs that may need to be addressed though co-ordinated...