Department of Health ignore concerns on audiology services for deaf children

This month has not been a good one for my anger. The Government denying equality on exams to deaf students. Deaf students having to wait for their Disabled Students Allowance. UK Film Council deciding that access to the cinema for deaf people is not a priority. And the Department for Children, Schools and Families missing the memo about British Sign Language having equal status to other languages. I’m now lobbying NDCS to provide me with something in the office to keep me calm. Maybe a rabbit.

And, of course, the cuts to audiology training. I got a reminder why it’s so important NDCS supporters contact their MP when we received a letter from the Department of Health on our concerns that audiology training courses are being cut, when there are already shortfalls in highly trained paediatric audiologists.

It was a spectacularly unhelpful letter. It was clearly written by a civil servant who’s been burning the midnight oil reading the book “How to say absolutely nothing at all”. It doesn’t respond to any of the points or concerns raised in NDCS’s letter. It pretends that we’re living in a world where everything is just dandy, everything will be alright on the night and there’s nothing to worry about at all. Worse of all, it says that we can be reassured by the fact that local health bosses have announced their plans on audiology training early this year. I may be missing something but I’m unsure how anyone can be reassured by a local health boss in one area announcing a plan to slash by half the number of audiology training courses. It is immensely frustrating to take the time to write about serious concerns and get a reply which just ignores them. The Department of Health must have a little sandpit somewhere where officials can bury their heads.

Hence, the need to contact your MP to ask them to support our Hear for the Future campaign to stop the cuts to audiology services. Over 300 people have done so far, which is great, but it would be great to get this up even higher. The more people who speak out, the more Government Ministers will take note and ask hard questions of their civil servants. And when that happens, hopefully then we can reverse the cuts and make sure deaf children can be seen quickly by someone who can diagnose the deafness and fit the right hearing aids asap.

Here’s hoping my anger levels reside in March…

BBC news exposes how social care services are failing deaf children

We knew that social care services for deaf children were bad… but a piece of research now published by the University of Manchester has confirmed just how serious the failings are. Some of its findings, just to pick a few, include:

* 60% of local authorities don’t regard deaf children as being “children in need”, even though the law clearly says any child with a disability is a child in need.
* Only a third of local authorities have designated teams that focus on the needs of deaf children. Other local authorities tend to have teams with no little or specialist expertise.
* 46% of local authorities had no specialist social workers for deaf children.

NDCS is calling on local safeguarding children’s boards to take a hard look at the research and do what they should have done years ago – review the local arrangements for making sure deaf children get the support they need. NDCS is also lobbying the Government to make sure this happens. There’s some more info on this, and the research itself, on NDCS’s website.

It’s pretty shocking reading, and it’s good to see that BBC news have covered the story. It’s also headline news on BBC breakfast news this morning and a young deaf person, Megan, appeared on the programme earlier to talk about her experiences. Hopefully, this will raise awareness of the issue.

Will new pupil and parent guarantees make a difference for deaf children?

A busy week doing campaign work on audiology training, access to exams and British Sign Language in primary schools. In an attempt to try and juggle four things at the same time, I also wrote up a draft National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) consultation response on the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ proposed new pupil and parent guarantees for schools in England.

The guarantees are basically a write up of existing and new entitlements for children and parents in schools. So, for example, if a child is falling behind, the pupil is “guaranteed” catch up support. The guarantees detail how you can ‘claim’ your entitlements.

Usually when I write consultations responses, I end up saying something lilke: “Hello?! One in five children have a special educational need?! Duh!” in light of the often zero consideration of the needs of children, such as deaf children. But this consultation was refreshingly different – the needs of children with special educational needs or disabilities, and their entitlements, was referenced throughout. It is the first time I can recall seeing a government document about all children really “mainstream” the needs of children who need extra support. My draft consultation response is therefore generally supportive and positive, a new and unsettling experience for me.

As for the policy, people have mixed views on it. The “guarantees” alone won’t guarantee that every deaf child gets the support they need. But they could be a powerful means to an end? Where deaf children are falling behind, parents now have a new mechanism to make a fuss about it and demand they get more help. The proof will be in the pudding but it adds a new weapon to our armoury when battling to get better education for deaf children.

But what do you think? NDCS is inviting views on our draft response so let us know if you agree/disagree, or if there is any key point that we’ve missed. You can read the draft response via the NDCS website. Deadline for comments is the 19th March.

Government to discourage teaching of sign language in primary schools?

Image courtesy of www.blanchenevile.org.uk

I’ve blogged about some of my ‘official’ work on the Children, Schools and Families Bill. But I’ve also been doing some extra-curricular ‘unofficial’ lobbying work behind the scenes, trying to get clarification on something quite worrying…

In a nutshell, the Bill proposes a new law whereby schools will have to teach primary school children a language. Looking at the small-print, this is defined in the Bill as a “modern foreign language” and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) will decide later what languages schools will be able to offer in meeting this requirement.

Alarms bell rang when I read this because British Sign Language is, by definition, not a ‘foreign’ language. It’s an official Government bells-on recognised language in this country. So I emailed the civil servants working on the Bill to get to the bottom of this.

The answer? Not good. Schools will not be able to teach British Sign Language and meet this new primary school languages requirement. I was told that there would be nothing to stop them teaching it as a separate subject if they wanted to. But the signal sent to schools will be quite clear – British Sign Language, which is the first language of around 70,000 people in this country, does not have the same status as languages like French or Mandarin in our schools.

I don’t know about you but as a deaf person, I’m quite offended by that.

Malcolm Bruce MP (who signs himself) has written to DCSF for an explanation. Hopefully, this will prompt the Government to think again…

I’ll blog again soon with more news, but leave a comment below if you’re as offended as I am, or have any other thoughts.

How you can help stop cuts to audiology training

Image courtesy of www.childhealthbc.ca

For the past month, the National Deaf Chidren’s Society (NDCS) has been looking into what’s going on with the Government’s plans to reform audiology training. What have we found out?

1) The cuts are definitely happening. We’ve seen a letter (though we weren’t meant to) from civil servants at the Department of Health saying that “in the current financial environment, this [Government plans] inevitably will mean some reductions in commissions”. We know that local health bosses in one strategic health authority is cutting the number of audiology training places by half. Others are telling existing students that they may not be able to finish the course.

2) The Department of Health consulted on changes to audiology training last year. The consultation closed in March 2009, but government Ministers still haven’t cleared a statement on a way forward nor explained how they’re taking into account views from the consultation. Yet the cuts are going ahead anyway…

3) Audiologists are up in arms. Nearly 2000 signed a petition (now closed) saying how unhappy they are about all this. That’s a lot of angry audiologists.

4) Even though the cuts are happening in England, feedback from professionals is that this is going to have knock-on effects for audiology services across the UK because many audiologists train in England.

5) Digging through audits from the newborn hearing screening programme, one of the most commonly cited problems is lack of audiology capacity. I read one report for an area in west London where 35 babies may been misdiagnosed by audiologists and “inappropriately discharged” because of there not being enough trained staff.

Crikey. With all this in mind, NDCS has decided to launch a campaign to stop the cuts. It’s called Hear for the Future (pun intended) and the aim is to ensure we don’t put audiology services for deaf children at risk. Deaf children need the best possible start in life to achieve their potential and be independent. They need more, not less audiologists, so they can be quickly assessed, fitted with hearing aids, and get the ongoing support they need. Personally, I would say that cutting the number of highly trained audiologists is, on balance, a pretty stupid thing to do.

So what is NDCS doing about it?

1) A letter has been sent to the Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham MP, to set out our concerns.

2) Letters have also been sent to strategic health authorities across England to get confirmation on their plans for audiology training and appeal to them to stop any cuts.

3) MPs are being briefed and NDCS hopes to get a few questions raised in Parliament on this issue.

And how you can help? Well, NDCS has set up a new campaign action where NDCS supporters can email their MP to ask them to support the Hear for the Future campaign. It’s dead easy – bang in your postcode, the website works out who your MP is and pulls up a template letter for you. If you’re happy, click on send, and Bob’s your uncle.

The more people who take part, the more the Government will take notice and stop the cuts before it’s too late. So please do get involved. And please do also spread the word to everyone you know.

PS Apologies if you had been unable to click on the link to the action earlier – a misplaced comma and the whole thing went haywire. It should now be working.

Funding for deaf access to cinema to be cut?

Image courtesy of www.ukfilmcouncil.com

I spotted last week that the UK Film Council are doing a consultation on their future priorities, and I’m glad I did.

There’s no mention of access to the cinema for deaf children and adults in it. For a moment, I suddenly thought that we now live in a world where deaf children and young people can go and see any film they like with subtitles at any time whenever they like . But then I saw the pigs flying by the window and I realised I hadn’t missed an important memo somewhere. We don’t live in such a world and cinema access for deaf people, whilst much better than it used to be, could still be a lot better. So it’s pretty depressing to read that it’s not a priority for the UK Film Council.

And it’s get worse. There’s no mention of funding for existing initiatives that aim to widen access. As I understand it, existing UK Film Council funding for the award-winning one-stop shop YourLocalCinema.com website is being cut. If I didn’t have access to the YourLocalCinema.com website, it would be a lot harder for me to work out what subtitled films are showing where. I probably wouldn’t bother in the end. On top of that, capital funding to allow cinemas to buy equipment to show subtitles is also being cut. In fact, according to the consultation, only around 0.5% of the UK Film Council’s future expenditure will go towards “diversity and inclusion”, and there is no mention of anything of direct benefit to deaf children and young people. Nada.

I know I’m not alone when I say there is insufficient choice of subtitled films at convenient times at local cinemas. A lot of cinemas seem to think that deaf children’s schools are quite relaxed about them bunking off to watch a film judging by the times they schedule some subtitled films. Instead of making cuts, shouldn’t the UK Film Council should be looking at ways to widen access, by funding research into on-demand technology for subtitled films?

The consultation closes tomorrow so if you’d like to respond to their online survey, you need to be very quick. NDCS’s response can be dowloaded from here.

Be good to hear your thoughts. Are you surprised / disappointed that the UK Film Council are not making access to the cinema for deaf children and adults a priority? Leave a comment below to say what you think.

Deaf students being denied funding support at university?

Image courtesy of http://students.shu.ac.uk

I was suddenly transported back in time around 12 years yesterday. Sadly, it’s not because I’m the Doctor’s new assistance. It was all due to a glance at a news story saying that 12,500 disabled students, two thirds of applicants, are still waiting for their Disabled Students Allowance. The allowance funds specialist equipment and costs of support so that disabled students are on a level playing field at university. I would guess that a large number of the people waiting are deaf, waiting for money for interpreters, notetakers, laptops, etc.

In the spring of 1998, I was putting in my application for university. There was a little box that asked if I was disabled. I ticked it. My lovely teacher of the deaf said the council would be in touch to assess my needs for university. Did my exams. Got the grades I wanted. Bought some tins of baked beans and got all packed up and ready to go to university. And then it hit me. The council never did get back to me.

I got my Mum to call them. “Oh. We didn’t notice he’d ticked that box. Sorry about that. I’m afraid it will have to be next February before we can arrange an assessment.”

In retrospect, I should have made more of a fuss to get things moving with a greater degree of urgency, and should have called on the help of the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) Helpline or a NDCS Family Officer. But I was a nervous deaf young person, about to leave home for the first time and really didn’t want to make a fuss.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can now also say that the assessment, when it finally happened, was rubbish. We had a cursory chat, and they gave me what I thought I wanted, not necessarily what I needed. I didn’t get a full and thorough assesment. I didn’t get any information on what my options were. I wasn’t told that there was such a thing called a palantypist (I probably would have thought it was a dinosaur), or given the opportunity to meet deaf role models. University staff were well-meaning but didn’t know that much about deafness. As far as I could tell, I was the first deaf person in my college in my university. I ended up being plonked in the wheelchair-accessible room in the Halls of Residence. My bathroom was larger than most people’s bedrooms.

It was after Easter when I finally got my first Disabled Student Allowance cheque. I got a good degree at the end of it all so I can’t complain too much. But looking back, how much did I miss in the first two terms? How many lectures did I go to where I didn’t have a hope in hell of being able to lipread for an hour? Too many.

And how much is this happening right now for deaf students? It’s pretty outrageous and I hope heads are rolling.

On top of the whole access to exams saga, it doesn’t feel like a good time to be a deaf student right now. Do you know of anyone having difficulties in this area? If so, leave a comment below or email us at campaigns@ndcs.org.uk.

Update: BBC online still failing deaf children

Back in December, I conducted a little experiment on BBC online and found that most video stories featuring deaf people were not accessible. Transcript? Nada. Subtitles? Nada. I fired off a complaint, and finally got a reply the other day from the Head of the BBC newsroom, no less.

It was contrite and apologetic. The examples I pointed out were of “great concern” and staff have been reminded about the need to provide subtitles and/or transcripts with all news video and audio material that might be of interest to deaf audiences.

Apparently, the problem still largely lies with BBC regional teams. So the overall editors of the news website are going to be working closely with the regional teams to ensure they are more consistent.

It was good to have this engagement with the BBC, and at such a high level. However, we have been here before, as they noted. I’m going to keep checking the BBC online website from time to time to make they finally get on top of the problem. If you come across any examples of video news stories about deafness not being accessible, please drop us a line.

Downing St petition on Government’s failure to ensure equality in exams

I am still angry about the debacle over the Equality Bill last week when the Government decided that, actually, you know equality in exams and qualifications for disabled people, isn’t all that important, like.

So angry, that I have created a No.10 Downing Street petition to vent my anger.

If you’re angry too, please add your name as soon as you can to the petition. And tell your friends, families, random acquaintances, pets, etc.

The more people who sign it, the more the Government will realise that they cannot, in the 21st century, get away with denying full access to GCSEs, A Levels and other general qualifications for deaf and other disabled people.

I’m off to find a barracade to chain myself to.

PS The Downing Street website will send you an email to check that you want to sign the petition – so please check your email afterwards!

Ofsted failing to inspect education for deaf children?

Image courtesy of www.cartoonstock.com

Tomorrow, a recurring issue around Ofsted inspections will be under the spotlight again in Parliament…

The issue? Why Ofsted inspections of schools that cater for deaf children, for example, those with a unit or resource base, so often seem to be inspected by people with zero expertise in deafness? Parents of deaf children already get very little information about education for deaf children, so I imagine many feel patronised that Ofsted inspectors don’t seem to think it’s important enough to comment on their children’s specific needs. Or they send someone who can’t even communicate with the deaf children at the school.

The National Deaf Children’s Society submitted evidence to the Lamb inquiry on the problem so it was great that the final report recommended that Ofsted change the way it looks at education for children with special educational needs (SEN). Some other good news came when Ofsted announced it would change its inspection framework, as of September last year, to make sure that inspectors of provision for children with SEN actually have expertise in that SEN.

So it was pretty disappointing to hear towards the end of last year from a father that his deaf son’s school, which has a unit, had just been inspected, and that the inspectors didn’t engage with the deaf children at all. Only after persistent chasing, was the father able to get Ofsted to confirm that none of the inspectors had any expertise in deafness.

Tomorrow, the House of Commons will be looking at a section of the Children, Schools and Families Bill which covers the Lamb inquiry recommendation on Ofsted. We’re supporting this section of the Bill and we hope that MPs will be able to confirm with the Government that Ofsted really is going to improve the way it handles these types of inspections.

Have you got any views or experiences of Ofsted inspections of education for deaf children? If so, please have your say and leave a comment below.