Shameless: new deaf character on the telly!

One of the plus sides of my job is that I sometimes find out some juicy gossip or really exciting news.

The downside is often I’m not allowed to talk about it for ages without fear of being on a receiving end of a visit from from the Maguires from Shameless.

Happily, I’m now allowed to tell everyone what I’ve been keeping shtum about for ages. Shameless, the excellent Channel 4 programme, will soon be introducing a deaf character played by a deaf actor!

The new character is called Danny, who is just 16. The intelligence I have is that in episode 7, to be shown on Tuesday 10th March, Danny will turn up in the boot of a car – and in true Shameless fashion crashes into the world of the Chatsworth Estate.

Well, I’m going to be glued to my set. Am very excited indeed. And from a campaigns point of view, it will be great for deaf young people to see deaf people on the telly.

BBC online video news stories: that deja vu feeling…

Today, I am mostly experiencing deja vu. This is because the BBC news online have put up another online video news story about a deaf child… without subtitles or a transcript.

Like last time when this happened, I am quietly outraged. This is a story about deafness – apparently about hearing dogs for the deaf – and yet as a deaf adult I have no idea what points are being made. I have no way of responding and am disempowered on a matter which personally affects me. I suspect the same is true for the deaf child featured in the news story.

What makes it worse is that the Guardian have shown that it IS possible to have subtitled online video news stories. So if the BBC were pretending before that the technology isn’t available, their cover is blown.

I’m also miffed by the assurances that I received last time that the BBC news online team would work to make sure all the relevant staff were aware of this issue. Doesn’t seem to have worked. It’s not exactly rocket science anyway. If you’re doing a story about deafness, make sure deaf people can access it. Doh.

I have emailed them again to complain so we’ll see what they say. If you’re as outraged as I am, you can complain at: newsonline.complaints@bbc.co.uk

PS Thanks to Tina and Smudge the hearing dog for spotting this.

DCSF consultation convulsions vol. 2: Children and Young People’s Workforce

A second consulation that I’ve been working on is the Children and Young People’s Workforce paper. This is the Department for Children’s Schools and Families (DCSF)’s attempt to set out its long term strategy on the workforce in all aspects. It has attracted attention for recommending the creation of a social care workforce taskforce, following the Baby P tragedy.

It was a well written and clear consultation (unlike others I’ve been working on). The key point that we’re making in our draft response is that DCSF should move away from treating children who are vulnerable or who have additional needs as a homogenuous group and to think more carefully about how it can ensure that the workforce can meet the needs of ALL children including, of course, deaf children.

As part of this, we recommended that DCSF focus on training for mainstream teachers. I still can’t quite believe that at the moment – apparently – new teachers only spend one morning in a four year course on looking at the needs of children with special educational needs. No wonder so many teachers feel like they don’t know what to do when a deaf child enters their classroom.

And for staff who work in a specialist role, we spoke about different specific parts of the workforce that work with deaf children. For example, we highlighted the evidence that too many communication support workers are working to interpret the curriculum for deaf children without a proper qualification in sign language. NDCS’s position is that this is unethical and that there needs to be a Government programme to recruit more communication support workers – and ensure that they have the right qualifications.

We also talked about the need to address other specialist areas of the workforce, including teachers of deaf children, speech and language therapists, special educational needs co-ordinators and social workers for deaf children. All in the space of ten pages. Phew.

We’ve put our on the NDCS website to allow our members and professionals to take a look and let us know what they think – and we welcome any thoughts you might have too. Have a look and let us know what you think too.

Sounds good? An update on the acoustics campaign

So we’ve got a name for our campaign on acoustics – Sounds Good? – what else have we been up to? Here’s a brief run down:

1) My boss attended a conference in Manchester on building schools which apparently turned out to be a great networking opportunity with various local authority officials, designers and builders. Worryingly, my boss met quite a few builders who said that opt out from the Government standards on acoustics are widespread.

2) We managed to get the story covered in leading education newspaper the Times Educational Supplement.

3) We submitted a response to a limited Government review on the standards for schools that builders are *supposed* to be following.

4) We had a meeting with officials at the Department for Children, Schools and Families to talk about the scope for taking action on acoustics. The meeting was reasonably positive – but Ministers would need to get involved to push things forward.

5) And on that note, we have formally written to the Minister responsible for new school buildings, Jim Knight (the one that does all the typos), to set out our concerns and ask for a meeting. We’re hoping he’ll agree.

The more research we do, the more we get more worried about what is actually happening on the ground. For example, we’re getting a lot of feedback that school builders and educationalists are going gung-ho for open plan teaching areas – even though there has been no real consideration of how to ensure high quality acoustics in such settings.

A case of new policy ideas being pushed forward without a consideration of how the needs of children with special educational needs can be met? I feel a sense of deja-vu…

Our campaign is now moving to developing the logistics of our plans to engage with the media some more and with MPs. We have a few interesting ideas that we’ll be following up – so, as always, watch this space.

DCSF consultation convulsions vol. 1: 21st century schools

Every now and then, the Department for Children, Schools and Families suffers a consultations convulsion. Three months later, it’s poor little me paying the price as one of my responsibilities at NDCS to co-ordinate consultation responses and often write our response. It’s good to get the public’s views. It’s less good to bludgeon people to death with initiatives.

Anyhow, the first consultation was one part of a double bill – a consultation on 21st century schools. Frankly, I didn’t like this consultation. I found it repetitive and lacking in focus and clarity. I couldn’t really tell you for sure what it was all about. Much of it seemed to be a restatement of existing policy. There was some stuff about encouraging schools to work together in partnerships with other schools and bodies. Bizarrely, I thought, there was virtually no mention of local authorities in this 21st century school system.

Given the lack of focus in the document, it was difficult to draft a response. But I’ve made our usual points about including the needs of deaf children in terms of things like teacher training, access to the curriculum and Ofsted. On the positive side, there was a strong mention of the need to narrow attainment gaps and to meet the needs of children with additional needs. But this was in just one section, when I’d prefer to see a consideration of the needs of children with additional needs in all sections and everything that’s done.

I’ve also slipped in a point about the need to consider the physical environment in schools, which didn’t get a mention at all in the whole document. Schools can’t meet the needs of children with additional needs if the child can’t get to school in the first place. Acoustics in schools is obviously a key aspect of this.

My draft is currently with colleagues for comments and will be done soon. Watch this space. Have you read the consultation? Got any thoughts? Let us know if you have.

I’ve blog soon on the other half of this double bill consultation and a third consultation we’ve also been working on… as soon as I’ve finished my first drafts!

Thinking up a name for a campaign on acoustics…

NDCS has long been planning a campaign on the quality of acoustics in schools, but one of the trickier things has been trying to think up a campaign name for it. It had to be snappy and punchy and memorable – which ruled out anything with the word “acoustics” in it.

We initially zoned in on “Hear to Learn”. It linked sound quality with education – so far, so good – and was reasonably punchy. In fact, I wanted to go for “Hear2Learn” but I was outvoted by my colleagues. Apparently, using numbers as a substitute for a word is so last century. If so, someone should write a memo to Prince about this.

We were all set to go with this when two things happened. Firstly, we realised that NDCS had just released an educational DVD called “Here to Learn”. And secondly, we discovered that RNID has a project called “Here to Help”. “Hear to Learn” no longer sounded particularly original – so we threw that idea out the window.

We went back to the drawing board and canvassed of our colleagues and finally settled on a new improved campaign name. We’ve now gone for:

Sounds good.

And the final last minute twist? To add a question mark so it became:

Sounds good?

I like it beause it links sound quality with something positive. And the question mark adds some doubt into the arena by suggesting there is something out there with rubbish sound quality – like schools. The only problem with the name is that there is no link with schools or education. But after weeks of musing, I think there comes a time when you’ve got just to chose a name and stick with it!

What do you think of the campaign name? Grateful for any thoughts.

Of course, our entire campaign activity the past few weeks hasn’t been devoted to thinking up a name (ahem!) – come back soon for the latest on our campaign to make sure acoustics in schools are fit for all deaf children.

Update on Slumdog Subtitles

I mentioned in my last blog that I emailed the cinema chain responsible for showing a subtitled Slumdog Millionaire in Fulham… with no subtitles for the first five minutes to complain.

The cinema emailed back to apologise and say it took “customer care” seriously. It sent another email later to say this was being investigated internally by the cinema management.

They did also offer me two free cinema tickets as means of apology. Which is nice. I resisted the temptation to take a cheap shot at the lack of cinema showings at reasonable times, meaning that it would probably be a while before I could use the tickets.

Overall: the replies were sufficiently contrite and sounded as if it was being taken reasonably seriously. Sadly, I suspect it won’t be the last time a similiar experience happens…

Slumdog subtitles at the cinema for deaf people

I popped over to Fulham on Sunday afternoon to see a film I had been dying to see for ages – Slumdog Millionaire. Despite being one of the most popular films around at the moment, this was the first opportunity I’d had to go and see the film at a time which wouldn’t require me to bunk off from my job and that wasn’t so far out of London that I might risk entering… *shudder*… suburbia.

The only other opportunity came around a month ago when it was shown at Barbican for, apparently, one night only and which clashed with the night of my anniversary. I’m not sure my partner would have approved if I’d suggested popcorn for a romantic dinner – though given how few subtitled screenings there are, I did think about it…

Anyhow, finally got a chance to see Slumdog Millionaire. Bought some popcorn, met my friend, settled down, lights dimmed, film started. And then what happened? No subtitles.

I was furious. My Hearing Friend for a Deaf Person, Catherine, went out to make inquiries and was told that the projector wasn’t working. Catherine told me though that the distinct impression given was that someone had just forgotten to turn the subtitles on. After about 5 minutes, the subtitles finally came on.

It was only 5 minutes, and I did stay and enjoy the rest of the film. But it didn’t alleviate my fury. It’s just not good enough to show virtually no subtitled screenings of this film in central London at a sensible time and then screw up the subtitles. If the sound had been off, I’m sure all hell would have broken loose and people would have demanded the film be restarted. This film just carried on as if it was a minor whoops-a-daisy mistake.

I’ve written to the cinema to complain and will let you know how I get on. But deaf children and adults clearly have a lot longer to wait for genuine access and proper customer care.

Typos

I’ve been acutely aware for ages that my blogs are littered with small typos and spelling mistakes.

So, reading this, I was quite reassured to see I’m in good company with none else but an education minister.

Obviously, not an excuse for letting my guard down though! Ahem.

New education legislation hits Parliament – what does it mean for deaf children?

The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill was introduced to Parliament yesterday in what the wonks call it’s ‘First Reading’. It used to be called the Children, Skills and Learning Bill but clearly someone decided that it wasn’t catchy enough and combined it with another draft Bill on apprenticeships. I will henceforth call the new Bill the ASCL Bill – mainly because apprenticeships is one of those words I haven’t had enough speech therapy to be able to pronounce properly.

Anyhow, the contents of the Bill haven’t yet been published though we have a rough idea what will be in it. The main focus will be on dealing with the impact of the raising of the school leaving age to 18 in the future. One major point we’ll be banging on about is that children who are deaf or who have special educational needs are disproportionately represented in children who currently leave school at 16. So if these kids are going to be forced to stick around, the system needs to be equipped to offer a high quality education.

And some of the key areas we’ll be looking at include:

* There’s a proposal that if schools are ranked as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, they can be inspected less frequently. We want to make sure that no school can be ranked good or excellent unless they have excellent provision for pupils for children with special educational needs – and for this to be assessed by an inspector with expert knowledge in provision for children with such needs.

* Local authorities will now be responsible for school transport for pupils older than 16. NDCS’s Family Officers report a wide range of problems when it comes to deaf children and school transport so we’ll be seeking to address this through the Bill.

* The Bill is likely to introduce a right to request training for everyone. We want this to go further by introducing a new right to training for teachers if a child with special educational needs enters their classroom.

And there’s a whole range of other points – it will be an important Bill for NDCS this year. We’ll be working closely with other charities in the sector – and may be calling on our members to get involved. So, as always, watch this space and let us know if you have any thoughts or comments.