Cinema access website up for top award

Fresh from winning a People’s Choice award, Dean Rhodes-Brandon, the pioneer behind Your Local Cinema.com website are up for yet another award. This is one is a National Lottery Award for Best Arts Project.

It would be great if they win. So if you want to help make it happen, you can vote online and / or you can call 0844 686 8020. It costs around 5p from a BT phone line and it’s an automated phone line, so you can hang up after 10 seconds without saying anything.

Votes must be in by the 10th July. So get voting!

New sign language project launches

Back in February 2008, Malcolm Bruce MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness in Westminster, asked Gordon Brown during Prime Minister’s Questions about support for sign language users. Fast forward to today and a consortium of deaf organisations were formally launching the I-sign project and celebrating £800,000 of investment from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to undergo work to raise the status of sign language in England.

I think the i-sign project is a really important and innovative project. It’s been going since early this year and brings together various strands of work which different organisations are leading on, including NDCS, BDA, Signature, RNID and others. NDCS is leading on developing a family sign language website to help families of deaf children learn useful signs for engaging with their deaf child. And we’re taking a close interest in the work being undertaken by Signature to develop a qualifications framework for communication support workers. It’s a two year project with ambitions to become self-sustaining. It’s quite refreshing to see different deaf organisations joining forces in this way.

The new Minister for special educational needs, Diana Johnson came along to the event to lend her support and meet some families of deaf children. She was quoted as saying:

“Overcoming the communication barriers experienced by deaf children is key to ensuring they get the best education possible. The Government is committed to providing parents and the school workforce the communication support they need to ensure deaf children fulfil their potential. I am delighted that we are funding such an innovative and exciting project. Developing qualifications for teachers and providing interactive materials for parents to learn sign language will help deaf children communicate effectively both at home and at school.”

And our deaf work experience student, Paul, ended up giving a short speech in front of the Minister about his own experiences growing up as a sign language user. Probably not what he expected when he joined NDCS for the summer – but we like to keep our interns on their toes…

Overall, a good day for deaf children.

Will deaf people be able to access government scheme on apprenticeships?

I popped along to the Houses of Parliament yesterday – as you do – to a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Disability. This is a group of MPs and peers with a stated interest in disability issues who hold meetings once in a while. Yesterday’s meeting was on the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill, a hefty piece of legislation that is now making its way through the House of Lords.

Lots of Lords and Ladies came, including Lord Young, who is the Government’s spokesperson on apprenticeships in the Lords. He was challenged on the issue of entry requirements for apprenticeships. The Government is creating a new scheme whereby it will guarantee young people an apprentice if they meet certain requirements.

Unfortunately for deaf young people, these certain requirements include GCSEs in English and Maths. Putting to one side the issue of whether deaf children get the right support to be able to fulfill their potential and achieve these GCSEs, is a deaf person whose first language is British Sign Language necessarily going to get or want a GCSE in English?

And yet the scheme seemingly excludes them, ignoring the fact that deaf young people will be able to make use of interpreters, communication support, etc. in an apprenticeship, as in any other job.

I was hoping that Lord Young might stand up and cry out “now that’s what I call discrimination” but instead, he made some warm words about the need to support disabled young people. But he also taked about the need to “strike a balance” and ensure that apprenticeships are “useful” to employers. So it doesn’t seem likely that the Government will abandon the principle of entry requirements anytime soon.

But we don’t plan to shut up about it, and will be continuing to press for these entry requirements to be relaxed for people with disabilities. So watch this space.

Deaf and disabled children denied access to basic NHS care

Every Disabled Child Matters (EDCM) have launched an important new campaign today about disabled children’s access to health services.

We know that many professionals work their socks off to help disabled children. But EDCM’s report still makes for depressing reading, particular about the cavalier attitudes of some other professionals to the needs of children with complex health needs. In one example given, a disabled child was left to die and spoken of as if she wasn’t ever really alive at all.

Like other disabled children, deaf children spend a lot of their time at hospitals, particularly in audiology departments. It’s important that all health professionals are child-friendly and have the right levels of deaf awareness to be able to engage effectively with these children.

And a large number of children – around 40% – also have additional needs, of which many will have complex needs. It’s important that their rights to effective hearing aids and audiological equipment isn’t overlooked.

NDCS is supporting the campaign and joining the call for primary care trusts to improve the services they offer to disabled children.

Support for deaf children post 16

I got an email earlier this week from a father of a deaf son, offering to act as a case study for NDCS campaigns. Case studies like this really help us demonstrate the case for action and help make our campaign asks more personal and real.

As a campaigns officer, I come across lots of examples of how deaf children and young people have been let down. But this was a pretty upsetting email to read:

“I am writing as a parent of a deaf teenager who is coming to the end of his A levels at 6th form. My son who has a severe to profound loss was well supported at his secondary school but when he moved on to do A levels it was a disaster. The local Hearing Impaired Service informed us that they covered the 6th form college he was to attend (his secondary school had no 6th form so he had to move on). However, once at the 6th form he was given 1 visit per term (20 minute chat with a teacher for the deaf). When I asked for support with issues of educational concern I was given the message that there was no one designated member of staff for my son as he was an older student and that the focus for their service was with the younger ones. They went on to say that the older students should be able to advocate for themselves by this stage. My son had been given a separate room for his GCSE’s at school and a support assistant in the class to ensure he had understood and got the correct notes he needed in class. At A level he had nothing. The 6th Form even put him in the main exam hall during the first round of exams in the first year with all students and he was told to take his hearing aids out during the exams as the feedback noise might disturb other students. I informed the Hearing Impaired Service of this and they were concerned but felt that this was something that I as a parent should really sort out for my son, if he could not do it himself. They eventually came over to see the SENCO and my son was given a separate room for his exams 6 months later in the summer of the first year (his results for the Janaury exams were really bad but the Hearing Impaired Service did not even ask). In the second year of sixth form when I asked the Hearing Impaired Service to check that my son would be given the correct support during his exams the Hearing Impaired Service (manager) evetually rang to instruct me to do this work as her staff were busy with the younger students and reiterated that this was something I should do and that her staff were really not responsible. I was extremely disappointed by this attitude.

Given my son’s experience of A levels I can well understand that deaf young people find it hard to keep up with their peers. I have had to spend a lot of money on private tutors to give my son the extra support to keep up and follow the courses he has chosen. He has lost all confidence in his abilities educationally and this is very upsetting as he did well in his GCSEs and felt as though he could achieve anything.”

Support for deaf young people who go to further education colleges is clearly an issue we need to take a closer look at.

What did you think of the above case study? Have you come across similar experiences?

What does the Government think of our acoustics campaign?

So whathas the Government’s response been to our campaign on acoustics in schools?

Well, some of it is probably unprintable. I’m fairly certain that officials would wish we would just go away. Our campaign has generated a fair amount of work for them. I feel their pain as an ex-civil servant myself. But then again, it wouldn’t take much for us to go away.

The campaign is calling for a new mandatory requirement that all new school buildings be tested for their acoustics. Some of the arguments deployed by the Government to try and justify not doing this have included:

1) A government review is already strengthening guidance on acoustics. Which is very welcome. However, we’ve already been told that the review will simply strengthen the recommendation that acoustic testing should be done. It won’t make it a requirement. We have evidence that a lot of local authorities currently don’t bother to test the quality of acoustics as it is ‘only’ a recommendation. So this won’t work.

2) Most new secondary schools are now being built through a programme known as Building Schools for the Future. For these schools, it has been proposed that testing will be a ‘condition of contract’ in a draft contract that all local authorities will be expected to sign. Again, this is very welcome. But, again, there is a but. It’s essentially a draft contract. It does not guarantee that all local authorities will use it. And it would only apply to secondary schools. Lots of new primary schools are also being built at the moment. They need to have high quality acoustics too to ensure effective language development.

3) It’s been proposed that more be done to educate the educationalists. I’ve never been entirely sure what educationalists do – but I gather it’s their job to decide how schools should be run and designed. Educationalists currently seem to be in a lather about open plan teaching spaces without having really thought about how good acoustics can be made possible in such environments. Again, this is welcome. But this should be happening anyway and I don’t think it takes away the need for acoustic testing.

I think it’s quite simple really. If government standards have been set, the Government needs to make sure they’re met. And the best, and only, way to do that is to have a hard requirement for new schools to be tested for their acoustics.

It’s not particularly expensive to do. We estimate it costs around 0.01% of the cost of new secondary school.

It’s a small thing to do that would make a big difference. And it’s a sure fire means of making the campaign go away!

Musical chairs as Government reshuffles

For political geeks like me, the last two weeks have been fascinating. How many Ministers would abandon ship? Would we have a new Prime Minister? Would the Government just implode and leave a massive cleaning bill behind?

Well, now the dust has settled, we can see who is left standing. And once again, the musical chairs reshuffle of Government Ministers means we have a few new faces in NDCS’s key departments of interest.

Perhaps the key one is at the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). Sarah McCarthy-Fry, who was the lead Minister responsible for special educational needs, has gone. Replacing her is Diana Johnson. Who, to be honest, I don’t know very much about though I need to find out quickly.

I can see the rationale for fresh blood. But it has been less than a year since the last injection of fresh blood. And now we have a period of uncertainty as we wait for the new Minister to get up to speed. And we have also have to start again with briefing the new Minister with details of NDCS, what we’re about and what we’d like from the Government. Just like we did less than a year ago. It’s like a Governmental Groundhog Day.

Perhaps the biggest pain of all is that a meeting between ministers at DCSF and the Department for Communities and Local Government that was due to take place next week and at which we were hoping to make a breakthrough on our acoustics campaign has now been postponed. The biggest irony of all? The two ministers in question have swapped over to each other’s departments.

Obviously, Government shouldn’t be run according to what’s convenient to campaigners like me. But I can’t help thinking, does this annual rejuvenation make for good Government? I’m not so sure.

Celebrity endorsement of NDCS’s acoustics campaign

In a quiet moment in the office many months back, I was daydreaming about how great it would be if we could get Kevin McCloud, design expert from the Grand Designs programme off the telly, to give us a celebrity endorsement for our campaign on acoustics in new school buildings and speak a bit about schools need to be designed so they sound good.

A few weeks back, I was given an unexpected opportunity to ask if this might be possible when I went along for a catch up meeting with a Channel 4 disability advisor. I though it would be a long short, but gave it a try and mentioned it anyway.

Well, it turns out that if you ask, you may well get. Kevin’s agent sent us over a quote giving his support for the campaign. Wowzers. The quote is now helping us get lots more coverage of our campaign around the UK. It’s a bit of celebrity stardust but hopefully it will will help us grab and keep the Government’s attention until we have persuaded them of the need for urgent action.

NDCS uncovers damning evidence on acoustics in schools

Even though the Government is aiming to build or refurbish thousands of new schools, it has done very little to survey schools for their listening environments. It was always a bit of stumbling block for NDCS’s campaign. Although we had lots of parents and professionals telling us about their own experiences of new classrooms with poor acoustics and a wide range of other organisations supporting NDCS’s campaign, we found it hard to demonstrate that schools with poor acoustics were just one-off examples.

Well, no longer. We did a survey of local authorities in which we knew a new school has been built in that area since 2003. We got 38 usable replies. Of those, only 21% could confirm to us that the acoustics in the schools in their area met the government’s standards.

The rest couldn’t confirm because the schools in their area a) hadn’t been tested or b) had done a test but failed it. In fact, where testing took place, over half of local authorities had schools that failed it.

All of this now means that I can go around using the term “damning evidence” with wild abandon like a Daily Mail journalist. We think this damning evidence makes for compelling evidence for the central ask of our campaign – that all new school buildings should be required by law to be tested for their acoustics. A fail means they should not be allowed to open. This damning evidence should also result in the Government making sure it monitors the quality of acoustics in schools. Small charities like NDCS shouldn’t have to pay of it.

Along with the event, the hope is that this damning evidence bring us closer to the moment where the Government just gets on with it.

You can read the report here. If you’re outraged by the findings as we are, you can contact your MP and demand action. Over 300 of you have done so already.

Big shindig at Parliament to demand action on acoustics

God, I’m glad today is over. Today, we went off to Parliament for a parliamentary event to promote our Sounds good? campaign for better acoustics in schools. The event was hosted by John Bercow MP, a respected Conservative MP, who has made it his mission to ensure that the needs of children with special educational needs are high on the political agenda.

Around 40 odd MPs turned up. It was a fantastic show of support. But it did mean that for 2 hours, I felt completely mobbed, even with a large contingent of NDCS staff on hand to help out. I’m not sure I ever want to meet a MP again.

The idea behind the event was to give MPs the opportunity to find out more about the importance of acoustics. They could do this by a) meeting some local deaf children and b) listening to a computer simulation of what a teacher’s voice in a classroom with rubbish acoustics sounds like. And they got to get their photo taken with the deaf children. The photos will be winging their way out to local media across the UK and will help us raise awareness of the campaign. We also published results of a survey of local authorities – which I’ll be blogging about soon.

Two Ministers were due to come but they got reshuffled at the last minute in the governmental game of musical chairs. Shame but the new Ministers will be hearing from us soon!

It was a great day and a culmination of a lot of campaign work to try and produce a ‘critical’ moment. Along with the survey, we hope we’ve now reached the moment where we hope that the mass of support and the case for urgent action is so compelling that the Government just gets on with it. It will be a few weeks before we can see if it’s worked.