Being unreasonable: Film4 and Somerset House’s outdoor screenings

As a deaf person, there are sometimes times when I wonder if I’m being completely unreasonable or just feel a bit awkward for asking that things are done slightly different for me to accommodate my deafness and allow me to do and enjoy things like everyone else. Like requesting that my hearing friends go somewhere that isn’t quite as noisy as the usual haunts for once. Or expecting my GP to remember that I lipread.

This feeling came back to me as a result of an ongoing saga with Film4. Film4 do a series of outdoor screenings at Somerset House in the summer. Somerset House is often described as one of the most prestigious venues in London which makes me wonder why half of the building seems to be given over to the Inland Revenue but I digress…

Last year, a member wrote to NDCS to complain that her 17 year old deaf daughter couldn’t go to any of the outdoor screenings that she wanted to because there were no subtitles for any of non-foreign language films. NDCS made a fuss on her behalf and Channel 4, which owns Film4promised they would look to make it more accessible this year.

And did they? Apparently not. Only the foreign language films are subtitled. After a whole year, Channel 4 have apparently been unable to find a solution.

I’m sure there are some very good reasons why this is difficult. It may involve spending money. It’s probably something to do with the venue. Deaf children and adults can enjoy access to films in other ways. Why bother going to this effort for a very small group of deaf children and adults who might benefit? It’s only a one-off event, a ‘niche’ event, hardly a big deal. In making a fuss, are deaf people being unreasonable?

I don’t think so. I find it hard believe that a solution could not have been found after 365 days to think about it. It may have been inconvenient or taken money away from the budget for Big Brother but what happened to being serious about providing access? Isn’t there a principle involved here? Deaf children and adults have the same right to access cultural events as everyone else – even if they are just one-off “niche” events. In failing to provide access, Channel 4 have sent a signal that the needs of deaf children and adults are unimportant, do not matter and should not be allowed to get in the way of running these cultural events, out of which Channel 4 is gaining valuable publicity and kudos. Channel 4 could have taken a lead. Instead, they’ve ruined whatever good story they had to tell on access for deaf children and people.

This is the 21st century and with the huge technological developments in place and greater awareness of the rights and needs of deaf children, I resent being made to feel unreasonable.

5 reasons to stop what you’re doing and write to your MP

I’ve been looking at some of our internal statistics… and more people seem to be reading my blog than writing to their MP to tell him/her about our campaign!

So for this post, I’d like to encourage you to write to your MP about our Must do better! campaign report. Get him/her to ask the Department for Children, Schools and Families to implement the recommendations of our report.

Click here to write to your MP. Or here. Here will do as well.

Still unpersuaded? Here are five good reasons to write to your MP.

1) We have special software on our website that makes it quick and easy for you to do this. If it takes you longer than 5 minutes, I’ll give you a Malteser to compensate you for your time.

2) You don’t need to know who your MP. Just type in your details and we’ll work it out. We promise not to tell anyone that you don’t know.

3) We write a draft letter for you so you don’t have to do any work. You can just email it straightaway at the click of the button or you can print it off, sign it and pop it in the post. And if you want to personalise the letter so you sound less like me, you can do that too.

4) You’ll help us make a difference. MPs do take notice of these things. They’re scared of you because you can drive them out of a job. So you can use that power to get MPs to take notice of the fact that deaf children are being let down. The more MPs that take notice, the more the Government takes notices, and the more the Government notices, the more the people who have the power to change things start to change things for the better.

So it it all starts with you.

5) And finally, you’ll make me happy. You can also make me happy by buying me some chocolate digestives but I’ll settle for writing to your MP.

Here’s the link again.

And if you’ve already done it, why not email your friends and family to tell them all about it? We have special software that allows you to do that too!

Don’t mention the phonics!

So after all that hard work in getting our campaign report written, published and launched, what have we achieved? Have we changed the world for deaf children and campaigned ourselves out of existence? Or was it all as pointless as Ray Quinn? Let’s take a look at what’s happened in the past month…

1) All MPs received a copy of the report and quite a few of them wrote to the Department for Children, Schools and Families to ask what the Department was doing about educational under achievement of deaf children. Quite a few replies have started trickling back to us. In one letter I’ve seen, Lord Adonis, the Minister responsible for children with special educational needs (SEN), says:

We support the aspirations of those, like the National Deaf Children’s Society, who believe that the perfomance gap between children with a physical or sensory impairment and children without special educational needs should be eliminated.

Ahh. The letter also says:

Our priroirty is to personalise learning, by focussing on each pupil’s progression, so that every child achieves their potential, whatever their starting point. High quality, systematic phonics… should be the prime approach for teaching children to read.

Arghh! Phonics is a way of teaching literacy to children which basically involves listening to the sounds of words. Because it involves listening, our report specifically says that the emphasis on phonics can sometimes be inappropriate for teaching many children literacy. So why is phonics being advocated as the prime approach? Slightly frustrating.

2) MPs have also been tabling questions in parliament on our behalf. Just before Parliament closed down for the summer, both Michael Gove and Simon Hughes asked about deaf children, which elicited an interesting reply. In one excerpt, the Minister says:

Our renewed literacy strategy builds on Sir Jim Rose’s independent review of the teaching of early reading by putting phonics at the heart of teaching reading in order to help to raise attainment levels amongst all pupils.

Arrrghhh! Phonics again!

3) We also managed to get lots of local papers from across the UK, from Glasgow to Cambridge covering our campaign, and highlighting how their local MP was supporting it. Here’s an example from Glasgow about Jim Murphy’s support for our campaign.

Local press coverage like this is helping us spread awareness of the problem across the UK. Disability Now magazine also covered the story.

4) Finally, Lord Adonis has agreed to meet with NDCS in September. This is very good news, and will hopefully allow us to explain in person why the need for action is so urgent. And why I go “Arrrgh!” everytime I hear the word ‘phonics’. We’re currently thinking up our ‘hit list’ of things we want to ask him to do.

My overall assessment? Well, we haven’t changed the world, but then that was never really going to happen overnight. Some of the replies coming through so far are slightly disappointing in their emphasis on phonics, suggesting that key civil servants haven’t really digested this point.

But I hope we’ve created a wide and warm base of support from which seeds of action may grow. It is encouraging that MPs are raising issues relevant to us – sometimes at our prompting but often at their own behest. Clearly we have some way to go – but we’ve made some small steps forward.

What’s your assessment? Let me know your thought while I take some big steps forward towards the pub.

School’s out!

Parliament broke for summer yesterday (or “rose for recess” as Parliamentary wonks like to put it) and they don’t come back until October. On the one hand, I’m slightly jealous. On the other, I’m slightly relieved. I feel a bit like a teacher who’s spent the last few months watching over a bunch of manic hyperactive children, monitoring closely what they’re up to and what they’re saying and keeping a constant eye out for mischief. I can now breath a sigh of relief that they’ve all gone home for the summer and have a cup of tea.

In their rush to get things done before the summer, there’s been a rush of activity in the corridors of power. Here’s are three examples of things that have been going on in Parliament recently that impact on deaf children:

1) The Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill , which I talked about in an earlier blog, is now set to become law. It quickly passed through the remaining hurdles left in the House of Lords and the Queen has graciously agreed to approve the Bill by giving it her ‘royal assent’. As this is a private member’s bill, put forward by Sharon Hodgson MP, which don’t normally succeed, this is really good news. In requiring the Department to collect and publish more information about children with special educational needs, the Bill will hopefully be a powerful catalyst for change and have a positive impact for deaf children. Top marks for Sharon!

2) John Bercow issued a report about services for children with speech, language and communication needs. Many children who are deaf, for example, may need speech and langauge therapy and/or communication support so this report was a good opportunity to make sure their needs are taken into account. It follows a call for evidence last year where we encouraged parents of deaf children to input thieir views. Nearly 10% of the final responses came from parents or professionals working with deaf children. My esteemed colleague, Angela Deckett, has talked about this on her excellent blog for professionals.

3) Lord Morris asked a parliamentary question (PQ) in the House of Lords about our Big Plans event that we held a while back. A PQ is an opportunity for MPs or Lords to get the Government’s official ‘position’ on something. It also provides us with a quote that we can throw back in the Government’s face when we need to hold them to account on something. Sometimes though, answers can be horribly vague as to border on meaningless. I should know – in my previous job, it was my responsibility to occasionally draft answers to PQs.

Anyhow, below is the PQ and the answer!

Lord Morris of Manchester asked Her Majesty’s Government: What consideration they have given to the key findings of the National Deaf Children’s Society’s recent survey of the needs and views of deaf children and young people as they affect government departments; and what action they will be taking.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Lord Adonis): The National Deaf Children’s Society’s report Changing Your World Youth Consultation was launched on 10 June 2008. This said that that young people want to see more mainstreaming of activities for deaf children and young people. The Youth Opportunity and Youth Capital Funds which we introduced in 2006 give young people a direct say over activities and facilities in their area. It is a universal programme with a focus on reaching disadvantaged young people including those with disabilities. Young people can participate in three ways: as an applicant for funding: as a grant giver; and as a beneficiary of the activity or facility provided through the programme.

Young people also want more information and advice made available to them. The National Core Offer was launched as part of Aiming High for Disabled Children on 15 May 2008. The National Core Offer is a statement of the standards which families with disabled children can expect across the country from local services. It is concerned mainly with early years, education, youth, social care and health services, but is also relevant for those delivering housing, leisure and transport services.

The core offer will ensure that parents of disabled children are involved in determining provision; have a single assessment of need where possible; are clear what they are entitled to and how to access the service; give disabled children and young people the option of being fully involved in the development of local services and designing their package of care; and are not subject to multiple assessments before services are provided.

Apart from the fact that it got the name of our report wrong and seemed confused about what our event was about, it was useful for us as the Government confirmed that deaf children should be benefitting from two important Government initiatives – the Youth Opportunity Fund and the Core Offer. So if we suspect this isn’t happening anywhere in the country, we can quote the Government’s reply on this to remind them!

So there you have three examples of Parliamentarians making mischief – creating new laws, publishing reports and asking pertinent questions. No more mischief-making until the autumn though (in theory). I will probably miss them in a few weeks…

Aye the noo to Jan in Scotland

Well, I am now back from holidays. I have suffered the embarrassment of forgetting the security code for getting into the office after just 2 and a half weeks. I’ve also regaled everyone with stories of how I did nothing on a beach for a week. However, I’m still ploughing through my 421 emails, wondering if my colleagues are still in the pub a week after they first emailed me to ask me over.

As such, I’m not feeling terribly well-equipped to tell you what’s been going in NDCS campaigns – given that I’m not entirely sure myself – so I am calling on the ever helpful Jan Savage for assistance.

I sometimes forget myself, but apparently there is more to the UK than just England. Yes, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have their own governments and they all have their own quirky different ways of managing education and health. To make sure that the needs of deaf children are taken into account in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly, NDCS has campaigns officers working away causing trouble in each of these places, leaving me to look after England and any UK wide issues.

Anyway, it’s Jan’s job to bang the drum for Scotland and to remind me now and again that England is not the centre of the world. I asked her recently what she’s been up to, and this is what she had to say:

“In Scotland, we’ve been campaigning for better early years support for deaf children and their families. Whilst there are areas in Scotland where the co-ordinated support provided is fantastic, there are other parts of the country where services are just not working as well together to get it right for every deaf child.

There is no national guidance for professionals working with deaf children and their families in the early years and this leads to wide local variations. In England, such guidance has been in place since 2003, and many of you will have seen, or may be using, the Early Support Family pack, otherwise known as the ‘Blue Box’.

The Scottish Government is due to publish its ten year early years strategy soon, and NDCS has been campaigning to ensure that it considers the needs of Scottish deaf children and their parents. A motion lodged in the Scottish Parliament by a senior MSP calls on the Government to take action, and has already attracted the cross party support of over a quarter of all MSPs. Those living in Scotland can find out if your MSP has signed up here.”

If you want to know more about how you can support Jan’s work on early years or elsewhere, then pop her an email at: jan.savage@ndcs.org.uk. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.

Elsewhere in the UK, Victoria Taylor looks after Northern Ireland. I will be pestering her soon for news from over there but in the meantime, if you want any information on our campaign work in Northern Ireland, you can also drop her a line at victoria.taylor@ndcs.org.uk. We’ll soon be interviewing for a Welsh counterpart so watch this space for more details of that.

Once I’ve caught up, I’ll be updating you on all that’s happened the past few weeks – including the follow up to our Must do better report and some fairly outrageous difficulties we’ve had recently over accessible examinations and Film 4. In the meantime, if you want to take advantage of my momentary confusion, please feel free to tell me what YOU think I should be working on in our campaign work to help deaf children in England.