... AoHL

The following was sent, with the signatures of 70 RSLIs, TIs, RSLTs, & other Deaf professionals;

To whom it may concern,

We understand from a statement made by the Regulating Body of Sign Language Interpreters (RBSLI), that Action On Hearing Loss will now be offering work to interpreters who are not registered with NRCPD.

After many years of explaining the importance of 'the yellow badge' and interpreters/agencies working hand in hand to push for a recognisable bench mark of professionalism, we understand you consulted with a member of the RBSLI board in the 'period of consultation and clarification' before recognising RBSLI.

Had you consulted with the Deaf community or with any of the 1108 registered interpreters (other than the 43 regulated by RBSLI) we feel they would have told you that having more than one regulation body is deeply unhelpful.

In order to ensure a quality service for the Deaf community, we have been working towards becoming a profession with a protected title and having mandatory registration. The 'recognition' of another regulatory body could set this campaign back 10 years. We understand the desire for choice of membership bodies, unions, etc, but when it comes to regulatory bodies, there should be only one, as there is for healthcare professionals.

We understand that you have said you will review this decision on a quarterly basis, and would ask you to speak to a broad range of people so that you can get a balanced view on this issue. We would ask you to consider the long term effects on the communities you serve as a charity, and once again get behind the NRCPD and interpreters in their goal to achieve mandatory regulation by a single body.

Yours,

x

... highlight lack of BSL support in schools.

This doesn't need much explanation.  These are the jobs being advertised today on the British Association of Teachers of the Deaf website.  Only one demands more than Level 2 BSL (roughly equal to a GCSE) and many of the Teacher of the Deaf posts don't even require a qualification as a Teacher of the Deaf.
*Note the references to good oral/written skills and fluency in English!


Teacher of the Deaf (Peripatetic Sensory Support Teacher)

East Riding of Yorkshire Council

Salary: MPS/UPS & £4116/£2016 SEN allowance (pro rata). The higher SEN allowance will be offered with CACDP/Signature Level 2. SEN £4116/£2058 depending on level of BSL qualification

MPS/UPS & £2058 SEN allowance (pro rata) for candidates without CACDP/Signature Level 2

Section 77 - 84 of the Immigration Act 2016 requires that the Council ensures that all customer facing staff are able to speak an appropriate standard of English; therefore any applicants for customer facing posts will be assessed on this basis as part of the interview process.

________________________________

Part Time Support Assistant/Technician

Roding Primary School

Roding Lane North, Woodford Bridge, Essex

_________________________________

Qualified Teacher of the Deaf 0.8FTE

Cambridgeshire County Council

Qualified teacher status is essential Qualified Teacher of the Deaf (QToD) status is desirable.

______________________________

Sign Support Assistant

Cwmbran High School

Ty Gwyn Way, Fairwater, Cwmbran

As a minimum the successful candidate must possess BSL level two.
__________________________________

Teacher of the Deaf - Peripatetic and Hearing Support Centres

Wandsworth Hearing Support Services

The Lodge, Linden Lodge School, 61 Princes Way, London

______________________________

Teacher of the Deaf

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council

Children and Young Peoples Services, Education & Skills

We are looking to recruit a Teacher of the Deaf. Excellent communication skills are essential, including at least a Level 2 qualification in British Sign Language.

____________________________________

Non-Class Based Teacher of the Deaf and SEN

Tany's Dell Primary School

Mowbray Road, Harlow, Essex

You must have Qualified Teacher Status as well as BSL Level 1 as a minimum, although a BSL Level 2 qualification is desirable.

______________________________

Teacher of the Deaf

London Borough of Newham

Sensory Service, Tunmarsh Centre, Tunmarsh Lane, London Borough of Newham

They will need to have excellent oral and written communication skills and understand the barriers to learning that children and young people with a hearing impairment face and how these barriers may be overcome.
Qualified Teacher of the Deaf status will be awarded +2 SEN. Teachers wishing to undertake training will be considered (+ 1 SEN ).

_______________________________

Communication Support Worker (CSW)

Exeter Deaf Academy

Communication Support Worker (CSW) - Scale 1
Actual starting range for 35 hours per week, 38 weeks per year (term time) = £15,921.00 with the opportunity to progress to £17,364.00

Key Requirements (please refer to the person specification for full details):

British Sign Language Qualification Level 3
GCSE Mathematics & English Language Grade A-C.
Experience of supporting deaf learners in a communication context
Good oral & written communication skills

___________________________________

Teacher of the Deaf 0.6 fte

Allestree Woodlands School

Blenheim Drive, Allestree, Derby

____________________________________

Teacher of the Deaf

Sheffield Service for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children


Qualified Teachers with a proven interest in Deaf education and a willingness to undertake the mandatory qualification may be considered. Service staff are expected to have, or work towards, British Sign Language Level 2.

___________________________________

Teacher of the Deaf

Foreland Fields School

Newlands Lane, Ramsgate, Kent,

BSL Level 2, qualification or above.

_________________________________

FTE Advisory Teacher for Deaf Children & Young People

Camden Council

Job title: Advisory Teacher for Deaf Children & Young People, 0 - 25 years Qualified Teacher Status and Additional Qualified Teacher of the Deaf Status

You will have BSL stage 2 or be willing to undertake training.

_______________________________

Team Leader - Secondary ARC for Deaf Children

Bradford Council

Based at Hanson Academy
Department of Children’s Services
Sensory Service

Do you want to make a difference to the lives of Deaf children?

Team Leader - Secondary ARC for Deaf Children
MPS / UPS + 2 SEN (£4,034) + TLR 1 (£7,621)

The Code of Practice on the English language requirement for public sector workers, Part 7 of the Immigration Act 2016 requires that Councils ensure that all candidates applying for customer facing posts must be assessed in order to establish their fluency in English.

_______________________________

Teacher of the Deaf TLR post

Bradford Council

Based at Hanson Academy

MPS / UPS + 2 SEN (£4,034) + TLR 2b (£4,104)
32.5 hours per week Term time only Teachers Pay and Conditions
Established
Based at Hanson Academy

The Code of Practice on the English language requirement for public sector workers, Part 7 of the Immigration Act 2016 requires that Councils ensure that all candidates applying for customer facing posts must be assessed in order to establish their fluency in English.

_______________________________

Specialist Teacher of the Deaf – High Needs Provision (P/T)

Hamilton Lodge School & College

___________________________

2 x Communication Support Workers

Five Elms Primary School

Wood Lane, Dagenham Essex

NOR: 532, including nursery and Additional Resource Provision for deaf children

Salary Scale - 4 - £14,341 - £15,831 (actual pro rata salary)

What do we need?

Successful candidates must have an ability to sign to BSL level 2

... those interested in Deaf/Welsh education.

I'm fascinated by the support given to the introduction of a British Sign Language GCSE.  Has anyone thought about what problem they are trying to solve, and whether this would achieve it?

I was born in Wales in 1969.  Growing up with English speaking parents & siblings, we didn't speak Welsh or feel the need to speak Welsh.  The Welsh language was in decline and in the 70s/80s, in an attempt to boost the numbers of Welsh speakers, it was made compulsory to attend Welsh language classes until we selected our O-levels.

The language continued to be in decline, so it was made compulsory to sit a Welsh language GCSE. (O-levels and CSEs became GCSEs in the mid/late 80s.)
The problem with this strategy is twofold:
1) You can lead a horse to water, but if you push it's head into a stream, it might drown!  Students who struggled with Welsh, or languages in general, felt they were 'wasting' a GCSE choice and resentment grew.
2) Learning a language to pass exams, is very different from absorbing a language for everyday use, and it would be VERY rare in most parts of Wales for any child to NEED Welsh on an everyday basis. If a speaker can revert to their mother tongue, they will.

The growth of Welsh medium schools (from reception to A-level) is effective in many ways, though not without issues, some of which are based around native Welsh speakers reportedly being 'held back' by Welsh learners who don't get the practise outside of school.

Now, what has all this got to do with Deaf education?  Well, there are many similarities and one HUGE difference.

For children who are Deaf, there is little or no option to revert to a 'mother tongue'.  BSL isn't their language of choice, it is a necessity often denied, so the idea that BSL medium schools (or schools for the Deaf) would close down is crazy ... right?  Wrong!  Here in Wales, there are a grand total of ZERO schools for the Deaf.  The option is:
1)Send your Deaf child to a mainstream school with some kind of 'unit' and support from some staff who can use BSL to various degrees of competency,
2)Ask your education authority's permission to send your child away to England (Exeter or Newbury typically) to be educated.

Now imagine we treated children who speak Welsh like this! Imagine if you will, that when your child is born, they can learn language, but it's Welsh, and for some reason, they can not understand or speak English. No one in your family has ever spoken Welsh.
Your 4 yr old child who was born 'profoundly Welsh' can go to a local English speaking school, and they'll have a support worker who passed their Welsh O-level in 1984 to support them.
As they progress, a 'Teacher of the Welsh' (TOW) will come in to monitor them as often as once every half term.  The TOW doesn't actually speak Welsh, but has done many courses about diversification of materials and will use the support worker to interpret.  *Importantly, I am not doubting the skills of such a teacher, simply the policy which doesn't require them to know both languages.

As good parents do, you look for Welsh classes.  They are available, but are in the evening and cost a fortune.  When you decide that one of you can do the classes, you find they are all full. Apparently, there are a lot of people out there who have 'always wanted to learn Welsh', but don't have any personal reason to do so.  If one of you does manage to get onto a class, the Welsh you learn isn't the same as the Welsh that the support workers use in school - your partner is now feeling even more left out, because try as you might, you can't teach them as much as you are taught, and progress is slow!
You look on Youtube and find lots of videos of English speakers who are translating the latest pop songs into Welsh.  Not so helpful.
Your child can only learn Welsh to the level they experience it (second language O-level) so, by the time they are going into Secondary school, there are all sorts of issues.

Would introducing a Welsh GCSE help this situation?

Surely, a campaign to ensure fluent Welsh speakers were supporting children at Foundation stages would help more? That's where language development happens, right?  That way, your child's language would develop in the same way as their peers and by the time they come to sit their GCSEs, there would be no question of any support workers having anything except FULL fluency in both languages.

Alongside plans to help families learn the language that their child needs, and awareness raising in general, I believe this would give those children in a linguistic and cultural minority a better chance, whilst also raising the profile of the language in a professional and useful way.

Mr Gove.

Below are a few headlines I found after 3 minutes searching.

April 2010:
"Across England and Wales, there were 114,000 more children born in 2008 than in 2001 - with each year having seen an increase.
And the Office for National Statistics says the rise in births between 2007 and 2008 alone will mean an extra 700 classrooms when these children reach school age."

January 2012:
"More than 450,000 extra primary pupils will need places in England by 2015 as schools face a surging birth rate, government figures reveal."

March 2013:
"A quarter of a million extra school places will be needed in England by autumn 2014 to meet rising demand, the National Audit Office (NAO) is warning."


July 2013:
"Despite increases in school capacity there will be 120,000 fewer places than there are pupils, ..."

Any child/adult who has ever played a Sim City type game will tell you that you need to look at your birth rate to predict need. We have statistics coming out of our ears and yet we are still woefully unprepared for the number of children reaching school age. You can not say you were not warned.

Is this because each Government only plans for their 4 or 5 years and how they can make their mark?  It is too easy to blame the previous Government - the departments are supposed to be doing the same jobs, maybe there are certain things that should transcend your petty squabbles.  Is it that Ministers within that Government are trying to be sensationalists by changing things that don't need to be changed (GCSEs for example) rather than trying to do the best job possible?

Maybe Ministers forget that there is actually a job to be done - a country to be organised (not 'led' ) - lives are affected by your actions and inactions.

Knuckle down and earn some respect rather than worrying about earning money.

Yours,

Welsh Letters.

... Cardiff & Vale University Health Board.

Dear sirs,

What is it with the Heath hospital?  I totally understand that the NHS and individual HBs need to save money, but do you really need to stoop so low that when dads attend hospital to support their partners and new born babies, they are not even allowed to be offered a cup of tea from the trolley on the ward?  How much does that save the Health Board each year?  How much would a dad have to pay to the lovely staff (who look mortified when they have to explain they're not allowed to offer) to get a cuppa?  20p? 50p? £1?  I for one, would willingly pay for my tea rather than walk from the Maternity ward to the concourse and back.  Do you know how far that is?  It's blooming ridiculous that there is no other provision in such a large hospital.

What's that?  There are shops and refreshments in other places?  Have any of you visited recently?  If so, at what time?  I bet it was some time between Mon-Fri and 9-5 wasn't it?  Unfortunately, (ask the midwives, they'll tell you!) babies have a habit of arriving outside of normal business hours.  By 6 all the shops in the concourse have shut.  The little coffee bar in the Women's unit is shut even earlier.

People wander around the hospital despondently. Tired, lost because the signage is so awful, dehydrated and hungry.  People, whether they've had good news or bad, just want to experience a level of care, and that's the issue!  The NHS is supposed to care for ALL of us.  When the staff say, ".. only for patients." I wonder .. who is your patient?  Who are you treating?  My partner?  My child?  Or is it my family?  That baby is part of me and we come as a unit.

Treating dads like second class citizens as soon as their child is born is pathetic!

Yours,

Welsh letters

... the scaremongers (BSL Interpreter specific)

Many people in my line of work will have seen the article in The Guardian entitled, "Lack of British Sign Language interpreters putting deaf people at risk" which told of a Deaf lady who spent 12 days in hospital, had her appendix removed, but the hospital did not employ an interpreter at any point.(1)
Anyone put in this situation without an interpreter is at risk.  No-one can doubt that, except the ignorant many who think that 'lipreading' or 'pen & paper' are suitable communication techniques.

However, the story was then pushed on 'Deaf News Today' with the title, " BSL terp shortage puts deaf at risk  -  A growing problem in the U.K. is the lack of qualified British Sign Language interpreters."
The 'lack' has been translated as 'shortage' and suddenly we are focussing (as Jim Edwards does in the original article) on statistics rather than on the fact that the hospital failed their patient!  Deaf News Today weren't the only people to do this.

So, what statistics are they focussing on?  Jim Edwards (Signature Chief Executive) says that there are 800 registered interpreters for 25,000 sign language users in the UK.  Not quite Daily Mail sensationalism (see their '1 nurse for 250,000 patients' story), being as that equates to 31 sign language users per interpreter - about the number of children that many teachers have in their class.

So what number should we be aiming for?  Double that number?  Triple?  What effect would that have on the profession?
It seems that the common complaint by health professionals and employers is that interpreters are not available 'at short notice' or for 'emergency bookings'.  Well, if we triple the number of interpreters, that should solve that problem ... except of course, that the interpreters who are sitting at home waiting for the 'short notice' or 'emergency' jobs to come in, have no idea if they will get paid that day!  So, maybe they need to get a job on the side so that they can pay their mortgage ... but then they wouldn't be available for the interpreting job!

Some agencies have 'specialised' in short notice work.  They charge a premium and some organisations will pay that, but one of the other main complaints is that interpreters are expensive!

So, the world needs thousands of interpreters who are "registered, qualified, bilingual and bi-cultural professionals"(2) who have day jobs with bosses who will release them at the drop of a hat (akin to RNLI lifeboat crew) when they are called out?

I'd like to suggest an alternative - rather than rushing a bunch of people who 'always wanted to learn to sign' through some training to boost the figures, why not use the funding and expertise available to shore up the skills of the yellow badge holders(3) that exist?
Many Registered Sign Language Interpreters have a narrow comfort zone which means they turn down work in police stations, conferences, theatre, mental health settings, etc.  Knowing one's limits is incredibly important in our line of work (as is recognising over-confidence), but why is the training and subsequent CPD and support not shifting those limits and opening interpreters to new areas of work?  If this could be achieved, people needing interpreters at short notice would have a much longer list to chose from as confidence in/skills of ALL registered interpreters increases.

Just an idea!



(1)  Full story here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/07/lack-interpreters-deaf-people-risk?CMP=twt_gu
(2) As defined by: http://www.asli.org.uk/files/downloads/4_delivering_in_bsl_-_advice_1.pdf
(3) Registered Interpreter http://www.nrcpd.org.uk

... Cardiff sports fans.

What a weekend of contrasts!

On Saturday, my partner, my 21 month old son and I spent nearly 5 hours in the Millennium Stadium at Judgement Day.  The 4 Welsh regions in a double header, East v West.  Despite being Blues locals, Scarlets would be my team (as a Pembrokeshire boy) - so loyalties were split.  The fans around us were from all 4 regions, but it didn't matter a jot!  Everyone cheered when the teams came on, everyone cheered as a player showed skill and everyone clapped when any points were scored.
There was banter and I would be lying if I said I didn't hear any swearing, but from the old guys downing the beers, to the little Blues supporter behind us with his Ospreys dad, there was no ill feeling.
We felt safe and our toddler felt safe.  He thoroughly enjoyed his day, playing peepo with the fans and dancing to the music!

On Bank holiday Monday, my father-in-law, brother-in-law and I went to watch Cardiff City v Blackburn Rovers.  (I feel as if I could stop this letter now and everyone would understand!)
Before I continue, I am fully aware that some football fans are decent people, but the ones that surrounded us (and a dad and young daughter nearby) were nothing but thugs.  The applause as the teams ran on to the pitch was accompanied by the Rovers fans starting to sing.  City fans responded by chanting, "Shut up you c**ts."  This was the first example of many which left me feeling physically sick.  The constant stream of unsporting abuse made me angry and ashamed in equal measure.
When the visiting goalie was hurt and a Cardiff City player kicked the ball out so that he could be seen to by a trainer, the song, 'Leave him there to die' rang out!  Every single tackle resulting in anyone falling over was greeted by one of two responses.  If it was a City player on the floor, then the ref was a w**ker and didn't know what he was doing and the Rovers player was a c**t.  If it was a Rovers player on the floor, he had dived and was a c**t.

There was banter, some of it quite funny and clever.  "You're just a bus stop in Bury" is not a bad chant to Blackburn fans.  It's a wind up! A laugh!
On the other hand, "You're full of shit, shit, shit and more shit." is never going to compete for greatest lyrics!

The second half saw a more aggressive stance from the crowd, as chants of, "Chop his f**king legs off" and "Kick his face in" became common.  Other childish traits, such as refusing to sit down became an issue!  In the all seater stadium, I understand the club can be fined if the crowd stand.  When stewards came to tell people to sit down, as soon as their backs were turned, a shout of, "Stand up if you hate Swansea" rang out.  Everyone stood up - those who didn't want to were forced to because they couldn't see the game!

When the announcer congratulated the crowd on the fact that Cardiff city had recently been voted 'Family Club of the year', my irony needle nearly blew the top of my head off!  This was shortly before I witnessed stewards nearly having to restrain someone in the Family Stand (located next to the away fans) from taunting away fans as they left 5 minutes early.

I will probably get no choice about whether my child prefers football or rugby, but I know which one I hope he follows!