Climbing up Big Ben…

At the risk of sounding like someone who looks at BBC news online all day, I spotted a really interesting article today about Greenpeace’s campaigning activities, which talks about how Greenpeace engage in high profile media events to raise awareness of their campaigns, whilst also simultaneously lobbying Ministers. I should stress I have no plans to go and climb up Big Ben anytime soon (although I haven’t yet set my job objectives for the next year so who knows…), but the article got me thinking about how NDCS compares to Greenpeace and what we can learn from them…

I’ll explore my thoughts in a future post. Let me know if you’ve got any thoughts in the meantime. What do you think of Greenpeace’s campaigning activities?

Boost for BSL

Well, yesterday was a pretty dismal rainy bank holiday Monday in London. I spent much of the day wondering if the Eurovision results indicated that the prevalance of deafness in Europe was higher than anyone had ever previously suspected. I was badly looking for a silver lining to the clouds.

And I found it in this BBC news article where Lord Adonis announced more help for deaf children whose first language is British Sign Language (BSL). The BBC doesn’t quite give the whole background behind this story – as well as supporting deaf children in the classrooms with more communication support workers, the funding of nearly £1 million for a project on BSL will also help secure more sign language classes aimed at families.

It’s another good news campaign story for the NDCS and other deaf organisations and individuals, as it followed some sustained lobbying to promote BSL in the classroom and family life for all those children for which sign language is the appropriate communication option. It also follows a trip to Downing Street by NDCS and other deaf organisations to harass the big man himself. Here’s the family photo from that day out.

So what next? From my point of view, we now need to make sure the project for which funding has been provided delivers results that really make a difference to deaf children who sign and their families. We also need to make sure that families whose deaf children do not sign also get the communication support they need. And, of course, there are lots of deaf people out there who feel that the best way of raising the status of BSL is to push for a BSL Act that gives greater legal rights to BSL users.

What do you think? As always, grateful for your comments and thoughts.

Emotional well-being of deaf children

Its a sad fact of life that deaf children are more likely to experience mental health problems than other children. There are many reasons why this might be – but at the core of any explanation has to be the difficulties that deaf children may experience when growing up in a hearing world that isn’t always deaf aware. Not being able to communicate effectively with your own members of the family, where they are hearing and with your hearing peers in school can be a real struggle.

I mentioned in my last post that the Government has commissioned an independent review into child and adolescent mental health services, which goes by the catchy acronym CAMHS. NDCS is encouraging parents of deaf children who have used CAMHS to give their views to the review’s call for evidence. NDCS will also be submitting a response.

I think this is a really important review – and it’s doubly important that the needs of deaf children are taken into account. Sadly, I’ve known people who’ve had to make use of CAMHS. At the first, the treatment was appalling – the people who were meant to help her made very little effort to take into account her communication needs or to understand her background as a deaf teenager who had always struggled in mainstream education. She was forced to go into group therapy discussions – where other patients would give their views on her difficulties without her knowing what was being said. She was once told off for always wanting to sit next to the notetaker for the meeting so she could read what was being said. I was astonished by some of the stories that I heard.

Eventually, she was given treatment at a special unit in Birmingham. The treatment was better. But she was discharged before she ready and little ongoing care or monitoring was provided. The system failed her, and that she is still with us is largely due to the dedication and love of her mother, and her own will to keep fighting and surviving.

I am not saying that all CAMHS are as bad as the example quoted above and I know for a fact that there are some very dedicated professionals out there. But much more needs to be done to make sure that deaf children get the help they need and, even better, to promote their mental health and well-being so that they don’t need to use these services. There needs to be much more focus on prevention – and thinking about how we promote resilience and confidence in deaf children so that they can thrive when they grow up.

If you’ve got any thoughts on CAMHS, please drop us a line. Even better, respond to the call for evidence. The more people who write in about deafness, the more likely it is the review will take this issue seriously.

Top of the NDCS Campaign Pops

I like lists. I’ve done lists since a child. I use to do my own top 10 of songs each week and then do a personal kind of Top of the Pops of Ian’s favourite songs. Kylie Minogue was number one a lot.

Er, anyhow, with lists in mind, I thought I’d do a list of five ways in which you can help support NDCS campaigns and and fight to create a world without barriers for deaf children too.

1) Write to your MP. MPs are there to serve their constituents and can be very responsive to your concerns (they won’t get re-elected if they don’t!). And if there are a large number of MPs concerned about a particular issue, the more a Government is likely to take notice, and take action.

We’re currently asking our members to write to their MP about educational under achievement of deaf children. Our website makes it easy for you to do this – just write in your details, and we can work out who your MP is and prepare a draft message that you can check out and send to your MP.

2) Complete our short surveys. You’re probably bombarded with people wanting to hear your views. But when we do it, its because having lots of data on what parents of deaf children think can be invaluable in getting MPs and Ministers to see the scale of the challenges that deaf children face. With the data from our short survey on accessible TV for deaf children, we’re going to lobby Government Ministers and broadcasters to improve the quantity and quality of subtitles and push for more deaf role models on TV.

3) Tell us your stories. Nothing brings a campaign to life more than hearing the real-life experiences of a family and a deaf child that have been affected by a particular issue. That’s why we’re always looking for families to tell us their stories and be a case study. We will never use your experiences unless you have given us explicit permission to do so. Send an email to my colleague Pippa McIntyre at philippa.mcintyre@ndcs.org.uk if you’re interested in helping us.

4) Respond to Government consultations. From time to time, Governments from across the UK will ask for views from the general public. Responding to these can be a great way of ensuring that Government policy takes into account the needs of deaf children. An opportunity has just come up with a call for evidence issued on child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

5) Sign a petition. But gone are the days of signing a piece of paper on a dusty clip-board. You can now sign petitions online – and you can even sign petitions on the Downing Street website. In fact, there’s a petition online right now that encourages the Government to fully ratify a UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

These are just five ideas to get you going. The campaigns section of our website lists all of the current campaigns that NDCS are running, with an up to date list of all the ways that you can support our campaigns. If there are any other campaigns you think we should be running, let us know. It’d be great to hear your thoughts.

Bong! Exciting news from the BBC…

When I was a young deaf child growing up (I won’t tell you what decade – I feel old enough as it is), very few programmes were subtitled and my family didn’t get a subtitled TV until I was in my teens. I would still try and watch TV but most of the time, I wouldn’t have a clue what was going on. Why was everyone so miserable in Eastenders, for example?

A complete mystery. Anyway, it meant that I would have to pester my family to ask them what was going on, that I didn’t know really what was happening in the news and that I couldn’t talk to my hearing friends in the playground about what was on the telly last night. In short, I felt a bit excluded from what was going on.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon and I was listening to Mark Thompson, the Director General for the BBC, confirm at a House of Commons reception that there would be 100% subtitling on all of its 7 main channels! Amazing. And something that will make a huge difference to lots of deaf children growing up today.

The reception was organised by NDCS and the Royal National Institute for the Deaf to congratulate the BBC. And to call for more action! We’re an ungrateful bunch, aren’t we?

So what do we want? First of all, subtitles are really important and we want other broadcasters to up their game and move towards 100% subtitling. But at the same time, deaf children are a diverse bunch of people and subtitles alone won’t ensure that TV is genuinely accessible for deaf children. So we’re calling for:

* More signing on programmes for deaf children. Some programmes, like the Hollyoaks omnibus are signed which is fine. But deaf children want to see sign langauge coming from the presenters or characters in the programme – not from an interpreter in the tiny corner on the screen…

* More deaf role models on TV. Lots of deaf children never meet other deaf people. Who are they going to look up to? We have Ben on Eastenders but someone suggested to me the other day that he was a bit of a “geek”! Where are the whole range of positive deaf role models living normal lives and being a success on our screens?

* A greater awareness by TV producers of the needs of deaf children. For example, producers need to think about making their shows more visually orientated for young deaf children. NDCS has done a booklet with CBBC that will help their producers meet this challenge.

At the event, we brought along some deaf children from Mary Hare and Heathlands schools because we wanted MPs and the BBC to hear directly from deaf children themselves what needs to change. The children were absolutely fantastic. They were fearless, relentless and determined in going up to MPs to tell them exactly what they thought. They were definitely the stars of the day. In fact, they were so good, I began to get paranoid they were after my job of campaigns officer…

So, all in all, a great day out and a big step forward. Now all deaf children can see that everyone in Eastenders is miserable for no good reason!

PS If you want to support our campaign for accessible TV for deaf children, you can write to your MP. Our website makes it quick and easy for you to do this and you don’t even need to know who your MP is.

Being an “ANGRY DEAF PERSON!”…

OK, so maybe my job isn’t quite as sinister and shadowy as I made out in my last post. In fact, I work in a normal office near Barbican, London with a desk that’s overflowing with papers, and yellow post-it notes all over the place warning me of imminent deadlines. Oh, and my chair’s wonky too.

So what does a campaigns officer do? At the risk of sounding like someone who doesn’t know what they do (ahem!), I sometimes find it hard to put into simple words what my job involves. At the basic level, my job is to make change happen. I work with my colleagues to try and influence and persuade other key decision-makers that there is a problem that we need to solve. Those key decision-makers can be anywhere – in a local authority, members of parliament, in a Government department or the big man himself in No.10 Downing Street.

How do I persuade them to do something about it? Campaigners use a variety of tools ranging from a quiet word in someone’s ear to arranging big noisy public rallies. One tool that I do a lot of work on is trying to empower our members to take action themselves so that people who are concerned about issues facing deaf children can speak together with a powerful loud voice that decision makers can’t ignore.

I’ll try to give more examples of our campaign work in future blog posts. But I’ll leave you with something that my friends sometimes joke about – that my job essentially is to be an “ANGRY DEAF PERSON!”, fuming at my desk over the problems facing deaf children, and grown-ups like me. It was meant as a joke but I think, like all good jokes, there does unfortunately appear to be an element of truth to it…

Next week, I’ll tell you about some exciting news about the BBC. In the meantime, got any questions? Or know of any local anger management classes? I’ll try and come back to any comments you have in a future posting.