Deaf Children’s Services

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, my Select Committee colleague.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing this debate and for so comprehensively and effectively setting out the issues facing deaf children. I know how passionate he is about the issue, and he is a great advocate for the deaf community in this place.

It is important that the focus of today’s debate is services for deaf children. Children’s voices are not heard often enough in this place, and it is right for us to talk about them. I am also absolutely delighted that Parliament is making the debate accessible for all those who might want to follow it live. I hope that will be rolled out more widely.

There are 282 deaf children in the city of Nottingham. The majority attend their local mainstream school, supported by the sensory team at Nottingham City Council. Firbeck Academy in Nottingham, a mainstream primary school in the north of the city, has specialist provision for 12 deaf children—the school is actually in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris)—but all the children in the school are surrounded by British Sign Language in classrooms and assemblies, and many of the hearing children grow up signing and can communicate with their deaf classmates using BSL.

In addition to ensuring that deaf children get an excellent education at school, many parents require support from outside agencies, whether that is the BSL teacher, speech and language therapists, doctors, social care or audiology services, to name but a few. Managing those relationships adds to the increasing extra workload of the two full-time teachers of the deaf at Firbeck Academy. They increasingly spend more time out of the classroom, juggling budgets and timetables, because the school’s overall budget has been reduced. Those at the school told me that

“it is the same old story, if the Government want an outstanding education system, there needs to be more funding for schools.”

They are concerned that many SEN children’s needs are not being met due to lack of funding. Firbeck has been set up with specialist deaf provision and it is struggling. I am concerned for those schools that do not have the same set-up but provide education for a deaf child. How can the Minister be confident that such children and their families are getting the support that they need to thrive?

Looking to the future of deaf children’s education, as my hon. Friend said, 57% of peripatetic teachers of the deaf are over the age of 50, and insufficient new trainees are being brought through. The training itself to become a teacher of the deaf has been reduced from one year full-time or two years part-time, which is less than in many other countries. As a result, some topics cannot be covered in detail and others not at all. There is no requirement for continuing professional development and very little budget to support it. I hope that the Minister tells us in his response what is being done to recruit more teachers of the deaf and to ensure the quality of their training. Also, will he reassure us about the mainstream training of all teachers; that it properly alerts them to the needs of deaf children and how to meet those needs?

Some children cope well in mainstream education, but others struggle in that setting. Nottinghamshire Deaf Society tells me that, in its experience, too many children do not get the specialist support that they need, find communication difficult and, of course, then leave school with lower attainment. The society told me that those children can lack a sense of identity, so missing out on the support and richness of deaf culture. That is worth addressing.

Deaf children do not need access just to deaf services; they rely on health services too. The NICE—National Institute for Health and Care Excellence—guidelines on acceptable criteria for cochlear implants are now out of date and out of step with those in most other developed countries, such as the USA and Australia. Lots of parents are understandably frustrated by that. The children might not be reaching their potential with a hearing aid, but they do not meet the UK criteria for implants. Over the past year the Ear Foundation, a charity in my constituency, has lobbied NICE to review the guidance so that clinical discretion may be applied in the best interests of the children. I hope that the Minister will liaise with his colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care about what benefits access to that technology could bring for deaf children.

I am conscious of the time, but I hope that the Minister will also tell us a little about what is happening to ensure that deaf children and young people get access to proper careers information, advice and guidance, to help them as they enter the world of work. As we know, poorer educational opportunities mean poorer opportunities for life, and that impacts on things such as mental health and isolation, as my hon. Friend said. I look forward to the Minister’s response.