Deaf children: invisible on the social care radar?

I’ve blogged a bit about mental health and deaf children in the past. Of course, one way to avoid deaf children needing to have access to high quality mental health services is to prevent emotional well-being problems from emerging in the first place.

So I was really interested to read phase 1 of a report that NDCS has commissioned from the University of Manchester on social care which was published recently (and which NDCS did a press release on). The research is looking at the impact of recent changes in how services to children are delivered by local authorities. Depressingly, it found that the needs of deaf children are often overlooked and that there a few trained social workers that specialise in the needs of deaf children. In many cases, deafness literally becomes an invisible disability.

One of the striking conclusions is that there is a widespread assumption out by social care professionals that hearing aids and cochlear implants ‘fix’ deafness. Which is rubbish. Such children still have a hearing impairment. This hearing impairment still creates communication barriers. And those communication barriers can still lead to deaf children feeling isolated, insecure and inferior – unless support is in place.

Which is why social care is so important – they can help provide this support from the start and stop problems from becoming critical. But if social workers lack the expertise in deafness to do this and are not undertaking proper assessments of deaf children, then many deaf children may continue to fall through the net.

The good news is that there are examples of best practice out there, mostly where professionals have championed the needs of deaf children. Going forward, our job in campaigns will be to make sure that this best practice becomes the norm. We’ll let you know how we get on.

In the meantime, we’re looking for stories of how deaf children have fared with their local social care and mental health services. Drop us a line if you know of any case studies that can help us inform our campaigns.

How many deaf children are there in England? The Government doesn’t know.

How many deaf children are in the UK? Based on prevalence rates, NDCS estimates 35,000 though we suspect this is an under estimate. So we decided to see what figures the Government holds on how many deaf children there are in England. We did this by asking a MP, the very helpful Sandra Gidley, to table a parliamentary question, as a means of getting the Government’s official answer.

Which was that the data is not collected centrally.

When you think about it, it’s quite surprising that the Government does not even have a rough idea. Are they not at least measuring how many deaf babies are being identified as deaf through the newborn hearing screening programme? And then tagging on the numbers for how many come to audiology clinics after becoming deaf as a child. But I spoke with NDCS’s audiology expert and she told me that until recently the Government didn’t even know how many audiology clinics there were in the UK. It would be laughable if it didn’t have such major implications for deaf children. For example, how can the Government make sure it can plan workforce development if it doesn’t know how many deaf children are coming through the system? How does it know how many teachers of the deaf need to be in place across the country when all the children born today grow up? How does it know what likely demand for hearing aids and cochlear implants will be? How can it make sure that deaf children get the services they need? Does it just play it by chance?

It’s no way to support deaf children. And I find it quite depressing.

PS The Scottish Government doesn’t know how many deaf children there are in Scotland either. NDCS Scotland has been doing some campaign work around this up there…

NDCS campaigns at the party conferences: freebies

It feels like ages now since the party conferences took place, but I think about them often. Such a great opportunity to meet other influential figures of politics and policies. To share and discuss ideas. And more importantly, to collect as many freebies as possible.

The freebies do serve an important function – to publicise the charity or organisation, especially if they are memorable and useful little things. With my inherent magpie tendencies to collect and hoard anything that looks shiny and new, I ended up collecting quite a few freebies. So, with that in mind, here is my top 5 of freebies accumulated from across the party conferences.

5) At first, it looks like nothing more than a little blob of plastic. But if you fold it, it then becomes a useful device to put phones in on your desk! Though my professional photographer couldn’t quite capture it, a little LED light also flashes on the front, thereby making it doubly useful for people who can’t hear the phone ring. A very useful freebie from the teaching union, NASUWT.

4) MIND is a national charity that campaigns for better mental health. And one of their freebies was a lollipop. Well, it made me feel better.

3) Not content with having produced the handy little phone holders (number 5 above), NASUWT struck again with an entry at number three, with something that seems to be designed to help teachers keep in touch with their inner child: a slinky!

2) It can be hard work being a campaigns officer, as the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) realise. Cups of tea are essential to get by during busy days. But where to put them? Well, thanks to the RNIB, I now have these rather cool coasters with images of the party leaders on them! It serves another useful function in reminding me what the leaders look like in case the stresses of the day become too much.

1) Finally, my favourite freebie was something from Action for Children (formerly known as NCH). At first, it took me a while to realise what this freebie was – a little something in a small round pouch. But twist the object and it folds out to become a freebie frisbee.

Warning: Do not open this object if you are surrounded by serious policy people and prone to screaming when something flies out in your face unexpectedly.

So there you have it, the final definitive statement on the party conferences. If you have any suggestions for freebies, quirky or serious, that NDCS can be giving out next year, please feel free to let us know.

Celebrating new legislation on Special Educational Needs

I went to a reception at the Department for Children, Schools and Families last week for a special reception. I knew it was going to be my kind of party when I saw they were serving Pringles. As a child, I was reknowned all around Leicestershire for my ability to eat a whole tub of Pringles in one go.

Anyhow, the purpose of the reception was to celebrate the passing of the Special Educational Needs (Information) Act. This is the piece of legislation, which I’ve blogged about a few times before, that will require the Government to collect more information about children with special educational needs do at school and was spearheaded by Sharon Hodgson MP. For deaf children, it’s an important development. If we don’t measure how deaf children are doing, how can we improve it? As the legislation was making its way through Parliament, we worked hard to lobby MPs to support the Bill.

Attending were a range of charities who had supported and lobbied for the Bill, Sharon Hodgson herself, Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, and the new Minister for SEN – Sarah McCarthy Fry.

Sarah was still only around 3 days into the job so we were not expecting her to talk at length about the Act and what will happen in practice going forward – but she did say a few encouraging words about how there was no reason why disabled children should not be doing better. Which is exactly the point at the heart of our Close the Gap campaign. Sharon Hodgson also took the opportunity to thank NDCS and all other charities that had supported the Bill – which was very nice of her.

It was a good opportunity to meet everyone and find out what’s happening next on a range of things. I did unfortunately get slightly starstruck when meeting Ed Balls. And I was even more lost for words when Sharon Hodgson gave me a peck on the cheek as I was leaving. Clearly, I’m not as cool as I thought…

Going forward though, we’ll be keeping an eye out on the Act and making sure it is used to produce lots of useful data about deaf children. And, as for me, I’m going to be trying to wean myself off my addiction to Pringles all over again.

Government reshuffle: new faces for NDCS

The summer holidays are officially over with Parliament returning to business this week. But before that, the headteacher, Gordon Brown has been busy this week reshuffling his team of Ministers. And of the three Ministers that worked on the policy areas most key to us, ALL three have now moved on!

Lord Adonis, the Minister responsible for special educational needs at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, has been replaced by Sarah McCarthy-Fry.

Ivan Lewis, the Minister responsible for audiology at the Department of Health, has been replaced by Phil Hope.

And Anne McGuire, Minister for Disability, has been replaced by Jonathan Shaw.

Here are all of the new faces:

You can understand the need for fresh blood, and to rejuvenate policy. But to have the three Ministers we work with most closely go at the same time… At a time, when we just about to meet with one (now cancelled) and had just met with another… Hmm. I was also minded of a recent Action for Children report which set out in detail the amount of policy churn relating to policy towards children, and the impact this has on people working on the ground.

Still, it’s an opportunity as much as anything. We’ll be working to forge new contacts going forward. In fact, we’ve already met, by chance, one of the new Ministers which I’ll be blogging about soon…

NDCS campaigns at the party conferences: a post-mortem

The party conferences are now over and I’m back in London, oddly excited by the prospect of spending a whole 5 days in the office.

So was it all worth it? My considered view is yes. I think we, as a small-ish charity, punched above our weight and made a range of new connections that we can now follow up in the coming months. Having tallied the number, we met or accosted 23 MPs, 6 MSPs, the Children’s Commissioner for England, the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Acting General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, and many other key figures. Of the 23 MPs, we met several senior figures, including the (then) Minister for Disability, Anne McGuire, and shadow Ministers in the Liberal Democrat and Conservative party. We have also have a long list of people to meet in coming weeks who weren’t able to meet with us at the party conference. On the whole, MPs have been receptive and keen to hear from us – and there is a sense that the NDCS ‘brand’ is increasingly better known in political circles.

And, of course, having a young deaf person at the Liberal Democrat party conference made a huge difference. It’s an experiment we’ll be looking to repeat in future years.

But how was it really? The Guardian has an interesting article (warning: this article contains naughty words) on this quotes a man comparing it to a freshers’ week

“Quite exciting, but quite stressful,” he added. “You keep thinking, am I having a good time? Or do I actually want to go home now? You never feel quite sure if people like you or not. And you keep wondering if you’re missing something better going on somewhere else.”

I can sympathise. It’s a very odd feeling to be on edge all the time, like a meerkat looking to see what’s going on 24 hours a day. It’s also a pretty tiring experience to do three times over three weeks. I refer to the conferences as the travelling circus, purely because you to get to meet many of the same lobbyists and charities again. And again. And again. It’s like Groundhog Day. But it was still all very enjoyable. Now that some time has elapsed I’m nearly looking forward to doing the same thing all over again next year!