A new menace is sweeping specialist support services for deaf children across England and the protagonists claim they’re doing so with the Government’s approval. It goes by many names. But most people refer to it as “traded services”.
Definitions vary. But when I refer to traded services, I refer to it as the practice whereby local authorities stop providing specialist support services for children with special educational needs free of charge, and instead start “selling” or “trading” their services to schools who must now buy them back in. Warwickshire council, for example, charges up to £85 for an hour of Teacher of the Deaf time and up to £285 for a day with a specialist Teaching Assistant.
Why is this a problem for deaf children?
1) Because deafness is relatively uncommon, most schools will rarely come across a deaf child. How will they know what to buy?
2) How are they going to pay for it? If budgets are split between all schools, regardless of whether they’ve got a deaf child, then the schools where there are actually deaf children present are not going to have enough money to buy the help that deaf children need.
3) It produces a whole set of distorted incentives. Schools are incentivised to save money for buying support “on the cheap”, like a general teaching assistant, rather than a specialist teaching assistant. Councils are incentivised to spend more time “marketing” their services rather than actually giving deaf children the help they need.
In Warwickshire, these problems are particularly acute because of (in my view) the incredibly cack-handed way in which the service has made the shift to traded services. A sub-group of deaf children have now been shifted over to “traded services.” 3 reasons to be angry with the council are:
1) Schools haven’t been given ANY extra cash to help pay for the help they are now expected to purchase for deaf children. The council repeatedly refused to answer questions on this issue and the council only admitted there was a funding cut when forced to through a Freedom of Information request.
2) Headteachers were told about the move to traded services for some deaf children over the summer break. When the school was closed. Many may only have got the letter once school term started.
3) Parents weren’t initially told. Many parents only found out when they discovered their child was no longer getting any help from a Teacher of the Deaf. The council has been remarkedly reluctant to meet with parents.
Warwickshire’s attitude has been incredibly cavalier. These deaf children are now the responsibility of the schools, they say. It’s a pretty shocking state of affairs when a council can just wipe their hands of a group of deaf children that they had until recently been supporting.
Parents are rightly upset and outraged. They’re petitioning the council to think again. And on Saturday, there will be a campaign day of action in Stratford-upon-Avon. The National Deaf Children’s Society is supporting their campaign to reverse the move to traded services. The help that deaf children receive should be determined by what they need, end of. Not by what their school is able or willing to buy back. And any cuts should be openly and honestly (or not at all). Not through reckless changes to funding systems or by stealth.
NDCS campaigner and proud Dad, Nick Beese, recently did some filming in support of NDCS’s Sign Up campaign to ensure all families have access to family sign language. Here’s an amazingly sweet clip featuring daughter Ava chatting with her Mum:
I’m not alone in loving this video; the video has gone viral on youtube and the last time I looked it has nearly 800,000 hits. When I looked this morning, it was around 400,000.
Not all deaf children are lucky enough to be like Ava. For the 9 out of 10 deaf children who are born to parents with no experience of deafness, many will face communication difficulties unless their parents get support on how to communicate with deaf children. At the moment though, too many parents are being forced to pay hundreds of pounds just to learn to communicate with their deaf child. Not what I would call fair.
NDCS’s Sign Up campaign is campaigning for families to have fair access to sign language. You can support the campaign in a range of ways, including by signing a government petition.
In the meantime, a huge thanks to Nick Beese and Ava for bringing the campaign to life in a great way and helping it go global.
As a campaigner, what would I like Santa Claus to give deaf children for Christmas?
1) Greater focus on making sure deaf children start primary school on a level playing field with other children. The newborn screening programme is now over 5 years in and every child born deaf should be being diagnosed within the first few weeks of life. Late diagnosis was a major barrier, now removed. And deafness isn’t a learning disability. Yet government figures suggest little change in the early years attainment gap. So what’s going on? And what needs to change to close this gap? In my view, there’s lots of theories and lots of best practice suggestions but no concrete answers or explanation of why the gap isn’t closing. I’d like Santa to bring us closer to some solutions.
2) Local authorities stop picking on deaf children’s services for cuts. It’s a false economy; denying deaf children support the help they need now means a generation of deaf adults failing to achieve their potential and make a full contribution. It also means parents of deaf children will push for statements for special educational needs, and the legal entitlements this brings. NDCS’s Save Services for Deaf Children campaign has information on campaigning to protect services. There’s lots of ways councils can make savings without impacting on services: such as working with neighbouring council’s to share and pool resources. I’d like Santa to knock heads together in council offices. Or at least make sure they get no presents this year.
3) And something for the stocking. The BBC, ITV and other programme makers stop using live subtitles for pre-recorded programmes. Charlie Swinbourne’s blog explains the fury caused when the final of the Young Apprentice had subtitles out of sync with what was being said. “Technical problems” are often cited. More likely, the programme editors were too busy faffing about with last minute changes that there wasn’t enough time to prepare subtitles. This denial of access is just not on. I’d like Santa to say to whoever is responsible for these kind of “technical problems”: you’re fired.
It’s a pretty modest list of requests, I think. What else do you think we should ask Santa for?
Otherwise, all that remains is to wish everyone who reads my blog a very happy Christmas and prosperous 2012. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the 2011 blogs and see you next year.
I can’t really pinpoint the moment when it happened. I started with really high hopes. But slowly, I’ve personally been getting more and more exasperated with the Government. The trickle of inconsistencies. Assumptions. And, above all, the lack of urgency on protecting help for deaf children when 1 in 5 councils are making cuts to the vital services on which deaf children rely.
My main gripe is the increasing tendency for the Government to say it’s a “matter for local authorities” to arrange provision for deaf children. That councils are expected by the Government to protect funding for “vulnerable learners”. If deaf children are not getting the help they need from specialist support services for deaf children and/or where massive cuts are taking place, it’s the nasty councils’ fault. Don’t blame the Government.
The Government can’t do everything, obviously. But at the end of the day, where else does the buck stop? The Government has the legal powers to intervene in specialist support services for deaf children. But even when faced with evidence of councils making swingeing cuts to vital services and not following legal processes, it has seemed quite relaxed about the impact on deaf children. Whenever asked to intervene, we hear that the Government can only intervene in “limited circumstances”. What those circumstances are remain a mystery – the Government has refused to be drawn, despite several attempts.
I wouldn’t mind so much if this was a principled approach on not intervening. But it isn’t. Instead, there’s a rather arbitrary way of categorising what’s for local authorities to sort out and when local authorities can’t be trusted. For example, the Government appear quite unapologetic about apparently imposing academies on poor performing schools, regardless of the views of the local community – if this article is anything to go by.
The Government’s main defence is that they have a massive programme of reform underway with the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Green Paper. But many of the proposals will only benefit the quarter of deaf children that have a statement. The proposals come with a lot of risks that haven’t yet been properly assessed or mitigated. Throughout it treats children with special educational needs as a homogeneous group; there’s little in it that is directly focused on the unique needs of deaf children. But most importantly, if so many councils are making cuts, what’s going to be left by the time the Green Paper is implemented?
The article I mentioned earlier includes this quote from a Department for Education spokesperson:
“We can’t just stand by and do nothing when schools are sub-standard year after year.”
It’s a shame they seem content to stand by and do nothing for deaf children when their services are being slashed.
One of my favourite campaigning organisations, Every Disabled Child Matters, have launched a new campaign action. They are asking people to write to the Prime Minister to give some good news to families with disabled children for Christmas.
In the days before David Cameron was busy pulling hissy fits in Europe, he promised that he would “never do anything that would hurt disabled children.”
This begs the question why the Government is pushing ahead with changes to disability benefits that effectively amount to a 50% cut in help for families with disabled children. As Every Disabled Child Matters explain, currently, low income and out of work families who claim DLA on behalf of their child are entitled to a ‘disability addition’ worth £53.62 per week. Families with a child in receipt of the high rate care component of DLA also receive a ‘top up addition’ worth an additional £21 per week. Proposals under the Universal Credit will see lower benefit ‘additions’ drop by over 50%. It might not seem much but to families already struggling without support, this may push them over the edge.
The worse thing? By the Government’s own admission, this change won’t have any impact on the overall benefit bill. That’s right, the cuts are completely unnecessary.
I’m fast becoming somewhat disillusioned about the widening gap between what the Government say and do on help for deaf and other disabled children. If there’s ever a time for cynicism to be dashed, it’s just before Christmas. So fingers crossed, the Government come up with a better gift for disabled children in the UK today.
I was having a rummage around the attic in my parents’ house over the weekend and came across a blast from the past: my old radio aids from school.
My radio aid clipped onto my belt and had a wire that plugged into my hearing aid. My teachers or my mum would wear a microphone around their neck. And hey presto, everything said would be amplified remotely into my hearing aids.
They weren’t perfect. I could only hear what the teacher was saying, not my best friend sitting next to me. They sometimes amplified wider background noises. And, of course, the teacher would sometimes forget to turn the microphone off. Let’s just say I’ve been subject to conversations in the staff room that I really shouldn’t have.
But it did the job. I could follow lessons in the classroom. And my Mum could do her job and help me develop language. And other children loved the fact I could give them a 5 minute warning of when the teacher would be back from the staff room.
Radio aids like mine are often cited as an example of an “auxiliary aid”. It sounds like something from Star Trek but they are basically things that help disabled children in the classroom. They could also include, for example, communication support workers. Lots of deaf children get this kind of support because they have a statement of special educational need that says this help is needed. But most deaf children don’t have a statement and therefore no entitlement to this help if they need it.
Around 18 months ago, the previous Government passed a law, with cross-party support, that would legally require schools to provide auxiliary aids as a “reasonable adjustment”. In other words, schools better have a very good excuse if they didn’t provide it, if needed. A consultation has just closed on whether the Government should go ahead and bring this law into force. Better late than never.
It’s a really important change to the law and will introduce a new safeguard to help sure deaf children get the help they need. I needed it 20 years ago and deaf children today need it now. If the Government don’t hurry up and bring it into force, I’m going to seriously question their commitment to helping deaf children.
Sometimes I wonder if the N in NDCS stands for nagging, judging by the persistence with which some people have been trying to get me to resume blogging about campaigning for deaf children. Well, NDCS is nothing if not determined.
Where have I been? It’s been a busy few months. Lots of councils across England still seem intent on slashing the services upon which deaf children rely on to do well. Depressingly, a few have joined my list in the past few weeks, and I’m not talking about my Christmas card list.
I also lost my media virginity by doing my first TV interview, for the Hub, a programme commissioned by the innovative British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust. Thanks to lots of patient prepping from NDCS’s media team, I was allowed to answer a few questions about NDCS’s Save Services for Deaf Children campaign and managed to slip in the key messages that sum up the issues. Hopefully, the answers helped spread the word about the campaign and motivated a few more people to support the campaign. And thankfully I managed to get through the interview without splurting out some expletive about councils making cuts.
Should I be allowed in front of a camera again? Judge for yourself online – I’m on programme 8.
I promise not to leave it too long before my next blog about campaigning at the Nagging Deaf Children’s Society.
How many opportunities does a MP get to ask the Prime Minister a question at Prime Minister’s Question Time? Not very often, would be my guess.
Which is why I’m doubly impressed that Malcolm Bruce MP has now asked two questions in three years focusing on deafness and sign language. Malcolm has a deaf daughter and is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness. Even so, to nobble the Prime Minister twice on this in front of everyone at the highest level is pretty dedicated.
Image courtesy of NDCS
The first question was to Gordon Brown in 2008; Malcolm asked if he would meet a delegation of sign language users. Gordon agreed and the meeting led to the government-funded project, called I-Sign. The National Deaf Children’s Society was a part of this and led on a workstream to increase access to family sign language. With 90% of deaf children born to hearing families, many families struggle to learn to communicate with their deaf child. Yet most local authorities offer pretty little support to families wanting to learn family-appropriate signs at convenient times at minimal cost. Through the I-Sign project, NDCS created a family sign language DVD and website and working with others helped to pilot special courses in the North West and South West. Do check out the website – it features a beautiful seaside town that makes me wish I could go and live in my computer.
The pilots are now over. But families still need support. Hence, the return of Malcolm Bruce at Prime Minster’s Question more recently to ask if David Cameron would consider rolling out the pilots to the rest of England.
The reply was once again very positive and encouraging. David described sign language as “incredibly valuable”, said the pilots had been “successful” and said he would ask the Department for Education to meet with Malcolm and another delegation. Bingo.
It will be no mean feat to get the Department for Education to agree to a roll-out. But thanks to Malcolm, the mission has made a promising first start. Will the Department refuse to expand on something the Prime Minister refers to as successful?
Today gave me a whopping reminder of the power of Twitter in campaigns when “celebrity” DJ, Sara Cox managed to unite the deaf community in anger at some fairly idiotic tweets last night.
It’s a hard life being Sara. She’s goes to the cinema on a date and then, shock horror of horrors, finds the film is showing with SUBTITLES! Frankly, I would tweeted in amazement that she managed to chance upon a film that was accessible to deaf people. Instead, she describes this on Twitter as “daft”. A few people point out that actually the subtitles are there to help deaf people access films. She dismisses them with what I can only describe as a naughty Northern swear word. A huge outcry later, still going the last time I looked on Twitter, said offensive tweets were deleted and an apology issued. Apparently, she thought the subtitles were for foreigners. Daft, indeed (here’s a screengrab of her nonsense – courtesy of @Deaf on Twitter) and the story has been picked up in a couple of news outlets including the Telegraph.
Is this enough? She’s said she’s mortified at the offence caused, should we tweeters get some perspective and all move onto something else? Maybe. But I’m still pretty annoyed and disappointed by the whole thing.
Subtitled films are few and far inbetween. Deaf people can’t just turn up to watch a subtitled film. We have to plan our social lives around the few showings around and then sit with our fingers crossed through some rubbish adverts in the hope that the man in the projector box doesn’t screw up the subtitles. Deaf journalist, Charlie Swinbourne, hit the nail on the head in his article for the Guardian a while back. Deaf children and grown ups need more access, not less.
As has been powerfully pointed out by fellow deaf tweeters, thanks to an ill-informed tweet, a celebrity, with lots of followers who seem rather keen and willing to defend her views, has now helped make it legitimate and OK to complain about access for deaf people and made it harder for deaf campaigners to persuade cinema to show more subtitled films. A lot of valuable work, potentially undone. Very frustrating indeed.
I’m sure Sara is genuine in her apology. But the damage has been done and there are no naughty Northern swear words that can take it back.
Last week, the Government promised “a quantum leap of transparency” in public services. Good! A bane of my life as a campaigns officer is trying to get information from public bodies, particularly around services for deaf children.
Much of the time, I ask for fairly basic information – like how many deaf children are known to the council and how many Teachers of the Deaf they employ. Sometimes I ask for something fairly important – has there been a reduction in funding for help for deaf children.
Parents of deaf children are taxpayers too. They need and want this information in order to decide what support is best for their child. Yet I hardly ever come across any local authorities that proactively provides this information to parents.
However, I do come across lots of local authorities that refuse to provide this information until legally required to do so under a Freedom of Information Act request. There are a handful that drag their feet.
I’m getting very grumpy to keep reading complaints from councils that someone had the audacity to ask them to provide information about themselves. Then I get even grumpier when I read the lame excuses. Some have attempted to justify a refusal to provide information on the basis that the information is too complicated and “open to interpretation”. In other words, parents of deaf children won’t understand it, even if the council took the time to explain the context. Others have complained that the data will be “misused”. In other words, the information might be used to hold the public service to account to see if they are doing a good a job as they can to help deaf children. Scandalous.
Parents of deaf children are being patronised by people whose job it is to serve them. If NDCS, a national charity, finds it hard to get this information, even with the force of the Freedom of Information Act behind it, how easy are parents of deaf children going to fare when trying to find out about help for their deaf child?
The stupidity is compounded when you think that this kind of information could be used by parents and campaigning organisations to campaign for better support for deaf children – i.e. more funding.
A quantum leap of transparency can’t come soon enough to end the arrogance of those that think they shouldn’t have to be held to account to parents of deaf children.
As a campaigner, what would I like Santa Claus to give deaf children for Christmas? 
