Mental Health Services: Sign Language Users

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, in a short debate like this it is not uncommon when you come in at the end for much of what you want to say to have already been touched on, but in this debate I am afraid there has been the banging of guns and the falling of foxes all over the place. I am left with saying, as my noble friend who has already spoken has said, that much of what we are discussing here was touched on in our debate on mental health. I spoke then about the fact that all disability groups are overrepresented in the mental health sector—end of story. Anybody in those groups who has problems in the outside world and suffers more stress will have mental health issues, as night follows day; the question is what we do to ameliorate the situation.

The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has rightly pointed to a particular group here, because the whole question is brought into focus when you look at a particular group: you see the specifics as opposed to the general. The whole spectrum here is made up of a series of specific points. British Sign Language users are going to have their own specific problems. They are specific, as the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, has just said, to a section of those who have hearing problems, such as hearing loss. The group has quite profound problems, and the question we are looking at here is how we make sure that they can access and receive support. Even if the noble Lord is right and they are a declining group, they are still going to have problems in the future that must still be addressed, because if you do not address them you store up problems, costs and inconvenience for the rest of society in an ongoing process. I therefore congratulate the noble Lord on raising this issue, because unless you concentrate on the problem in this way it becomes a generality, and I very much commend him for raising it.

Then we come to technology, and here I must declare an interest as chairman of a company called Microlink, which deals with technology. There is a lot of interesting stuff out there that can be of some assistance to those with varying degrees of hearing loss. As has already been said, there are dozens of ways in which you can play with language and translate it. There are things that can be used, and we have probably only just started to touch on this. There is something that can translate language into text; I use it myself as a dyslexic. There are dozens of bits of technology out there.

However, as was pointed out to me with considerable force when I started doing research on this, the deaf community across the spectrum is already using an incredibly widespread piece of technology called texting. This had not occurred to me at all. Mobile phones? I am part of the generation that regards a phone as something you talk to. I am apparently in the stone age here. Phones that you can text on that use a simpler, less elaborate grammar are actually a very common way of communicating in the deaf community. Do health workers and mental health workers actually know—the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, spoke about the same problems—that this is a way of establishing communication that might well mean that you find an easier path through to therapy than using sign language interpreters? It might well be some form of back-up to the primary talking cures for all forms of mental health treatment, which are generally regarded as better, longer lasting, more maintainable than simply pumping somebody full of drugs, even if drugs have to be used at the same time. Unless there is some way of bringing all these things together to get the best outcome, we are going to miss a trick.

Unless we learn to use the technology coming through, which is increasingly available—here I am probably shooting my own company in the foot—we will incur more on-costs. A little awareness training—asking people in casualty if somebody comes in who is in a very distressed state, “Have you tried communicating with them by text?”—may well relieve some of the stress, it may identify some of the symptoms more quickly. Could not a little bit of guidance here and there be worked in?

There are other forms of communication. My favourite one is called the UbiDuo. I like not only saying the word but the fact that it is instant typing to another screen that translates straightaway. The whole thing is about the size of a traditional laptop, so you can carry it around. That would be more appropriate for those who have good written skills, but there are lots of established pieces of tech that we are not getting the best out of. For the foreseeable future, we will need councillors who are skilled at using the specific sign language, with its rules of grammar, nuance and cultural references, but we may well need to support them and take some of the stress off them by using technology at the same time.

When all is said and done, the technology is generally cheaper. If we concentrate on that and make a funnel through to those very valuable—at times, irreplaceable—people, we will surely be doing all of us a favour.