Year 2 – Report 2021

Some implications of early findings

It is perhaps worth noting that these results are emerging from a cohort which is relatively well advantaged from a socio-economic perspective and an academically high achieving cohort in comparison with norms for deaf young people of this age.

However, difficulties with well-being, lower health states and lower than expected self-determination are all of themselves risk factors for less than optimum quality of life in the future as young people transition to adulthood. However, all of these characteristics are open to change.

Self-determination continues to develop throughout young adulthood, well-being and health can be enhanced and positive impacts on any of these will have positive impacts on the others. The poorer outcomes at this early stage for women and LGBTQ+ young people suggest that more attention should be given to these groups at this young stage in terms of supporting their health, well-being and self-determination. The lack of major influence of degree of deafness on the results is an important result. In the past, severity of deafness was commonly linked to greater difficulties in some aspects of life because of the likely greater disruption to communication. On the measures we are interested in, this is not the case.

Although having additional needs (over and above deafness) does clearly affect some of the young people in the cohort, it does not account for the much poorer health states reported by the cohort nor the everyday difficulties they might face associated with health. These findings may suggest the need for a greater emphasis on health literacy, health promotion and self-management of illness amongst deaf young people than has been the case in the past.

Socio-economic status is emerging as conferring some protective advantages, with those from higher socio-economic backgrounds having better health, scoring higher on self-determination and tending to have more expansive social networks. However socio-economic status makes little discernible difference to subjective well-being.

Although the proportion of those in the READY cohort registering as lonely/extremely lonely is not out of step with the national picture generally of loneliness amongst young people during the Covid pandemic, there is a distinct sub-group of extremely isolated individuals in the READY cohort that may be at risk of a range of adverse outcomes, with a clear association between low subjective well-being and extreme isolation.

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