Research on access to telephony services

Last night, I took part in an online focus group discussion about telephony services for some research being done for Ofcom. It was great fun. I would have done it for free, and they gave me £35 for taking part. Chocolate digestives all around!

I was asked lots of questions on what I wanted from telephony services and what I thought about text relay services, where a woman from Liverpool (where the service is based) reads out what I type on a textphone to the hearing person and then types back their reply. I gave my usual spiel that I only used text relay when I absolutely had to: that it was impersonal, took ages to make a phone call and that I hated having someone else speaking for me. It almost feels like having your Mum making phone calls for you. No wonder that so few deaf children and young people seem to use it.

Interestingly, I was then asked about what I thought about other technologies, such as video relay and captioned relay. Captioned relay would mean that I could speak for myself but that an operator would listen in and transcribe the conversation on my computer screen through the magic of the internet. It’s already readily available in the USA and Australia. It would be perfect for me and I would be phoning everyone up all the time if it was available here. I would be far better able to campaign for deaf children; I’d be on direct dial to the Houses of Parliament! So I felt encouraged that the researchers were sounding out people’s views on this and looking at other options. It’s on the agenda, which is a start.

Fingers crossed that the research finally leads to some positive change in the UK and that Ofcom act on it. It’s the 21st century: deaf children and adults shouldn’t be stuck with poor telephony services that don’t meet our needs.

The research are apparently still looking for people to take part – their website has more details. And my friend Tina does a lot of campaigning on this, as you can see from her blog, as do the Telecommunications Action Group (TAG).

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.