A CAMPAIGN THAT WILL CHANGE CARE.

There is a resident in almost every care home in England who has quietly stopped joining in. They sit at the table at mealtimes but do not follow the conversation. They nod along in activities without quite catching what is being said. They have become, over months, a little more distant, a little more withdrawn, a little harder to reach. In many cases, the reason is hearing loss. And in most cases, nobody has done anything about it.

This is not because care staff do not care. It is because nobody has ever shown them what to do. Most frontline workers have never been taught how to clean a hearing aid, change a battery, recognise when a resident needs a referral or adapt the way they communicate. The environments residents live in are rarely assessed for background noise or lighting. And the systems needed to support hearing loss consistently, day after day, simply do not exist in most homes.

At least nine in ten care home residents live with some degree of hearing loss. Fewer than a quarter of those who would benefit from hearing aids actually use them. Only half of residents with dementia receive any help with their hearing at all. These are not peripheral statistics. They describe the daily reality of hundreds of thousands of people.

Engage has spent nearly a decade working in care homes across England, training staff, supporting residents and building the evidence base for what good hearing loss practice looks like. Care England represents the largest network of adult social care providers in the country. In 2025, together with Nightingale Hammerson, we published a whitepaper setting out the scale of the problem and what the sector needs to do.

We are now turning that initiative into action. Small Changes. Big Difference. is a national campaign calling on care homes across England to take five specific, practical steps that Engage’s frontline work has shown to be achievable and effective.

The campaign launches publicly on 17 August 2026. It builds through the summer with a series of articles, social content and sector outreach. It culminates in a national launch event on 17 November 2026 in London, bringing together up to 100 senior care leaders to make collective public commitments and drive change across the sector.

This is not a campaign that will disappear after a press release. It is the beginning of a sustained effort to shift how the sector understands and responds to hearing loss, and we have the evidence, the relationships and the infrastructure to make it last.

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