Nearly 80 per cent of deaf children in England attend a school where they may be the only deaf child enrolled. The Helping Hands project aims to improve the confidence, skills and aspirations of deaf children by training deaf pupils, aged 10 to 18, to take-up mentoring roles.
The project has already been running in some areas and feedback from students and teachers has allowed the development of a toolkit to enable professionals to independently launch peer support groups for deaf pupils in their own schools.