Deaf People: Public Services

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they will take to promote the needs of deaf people in the provision of public services.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am glad to institute this debate on public services for deaf people. I very much welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, who is going to respond for the Government. I am sure that I speak for the whole House in expressing our best wishes to the noble Earl, Lord Howe.

I am raising this matter because Parliament needs to put much greater focus on the issues facing deaf people and I hope that the debate will be the start of a much more considered engagement in thinking about what kind of services are most appropriate to support deaf people. I do not speak from any particular expertise but my father was a welfare officer for deaf people in Oxford. In fact, he worked for the late Baroness Faithfull when she was director of the first social services department created out of the merger of children’s and welfare services. We have now gone back to that split and I am not entirely convinced that that was a good thing.

My main concern is that the life outcomes for many deaf people are not as good as they ought to be. Public services are not sufficiently focused on deaf people and there is probably a lack of drive within government and an over-reliance on local government without it being given the means to deliver the kind of support that is required. Perhaps I may provide some statistics. It is reckoned that one in six people in the UK are affected by deafness and hearing difficulties; more than 45,000 deaf children live in the UK; and 25,000 deaf people in the UK use British Sign Language as their preferred language Deafness is of course not a learning disability but half of all deaf people have special needs compared to one quarter of non-deaf people; over 50% of deaf people have experienced some form of abuse as children; and one in four deaf people will experience a mental health problem at some point in their lives.

Of all the statistics that I could draw attention to, it is those on educational achievement that are the most important and worrying. In their GCSEs in 2012 just 37% of deaf children achieved five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths, compared to 69% of children with no identified special educational needs. The attainment of deaf children actually fell in 2012 from nearly 40% in 2011. That is not surprising because there is a direct connection between lack of educational achievement and lack of employment opportunities. Whereas 80% of the non-disabled population are in employment—it may be a bit less than that now—just over 50% of deaf people of working age are in work. An awful lot needs to be done to improve the support given to deaf people.

The National Deaf Children’s Society report Stolen Futures demonstrated the disproportionate effect of public spending cuts on the lives of deaf children. It identified reductions in services across education, health and social care, and said that inconsistent decisions by the Government are setting children up for failure. The society says that to achieve their potential deaf children are dependent on multiple smaller specialist public services such as teachers of the deaf. The children need consistent co-ordinated support from an early age through to adulthood across the public services. Yet in 2012-13 25% of councils said that they planned to reduce one or more of the education, social care and speech and language therapy services for deaf people. What do the Government intend to do about that and the squeeze on resources and support services for deaf people? Will the Minister consider asking Ofsted to inspect specialist educational services for deaf children? Unlike schools and early year providers, apparently these services are subject to no formal scrutiny, despite their vital importance. The Ofsted inspection of SEN services would surely help. What are the Government’s plans to improve the educational outcomes for deaf children?

There are similar issues when it comes to access to health services. This is a challenging problem. An Action on Hearing Loss survey in 2011 found that 35% of deaf and hard of hearing people experienced difficulty communicating with their GP or practice nurse and 24% said they missed appointments because of poor communication, such as not being able to hear staff calling their name. Have the Government thought of having national standards for access to healthcare for deaf and deafblind people? Are there any plans to provide all NHS staff and students with deaf and deafblind awareness training?

That brings me to the question of the British Sign Language and alternative communication methods. I am sure all noble Lords were delighted when, after many years, British Sign Language was officially recognised as a language in its own right. That was a very significant movement which received a lot of all-party support. However, there are only 800 registered sign interpreters in the UK and my understanding, coming back to the health service, is that 70% of British Sign Language users went without an interpreter during visits to A&E in 2010.

There are some solutions to the problems. We need to have more registered sign interpreters and support for family sign language classes. Clearly, if a child who is deaf is to communicate effectively with their parents and families, the whole family needs to have an understanding of sign language. Access to family sign language facilities becomes very much more important. I know that some organisations for the deaf think that having a named Minister responsible for driving a cross-government approach towards supporting British Sign Language would be a major advance. Will the Government consider how they could drive forward a number of initiatives to ensure that, following the decision to recognise British Sign Language, it will be put into practice in a very practical way? Will they make sure that it is used as much as possible, that public services recognise it and that there are enough people, both in family sign language facilities and among qualified interpreters, to provide the kind of support that people need when they come to embrace public services.

Deafness and partial hearing are issues that affect people throughout their lifespan. We need to recognise that many older people have hearing loss. We know that, if their hearing loss is managed effectively, there is a real chance of improving the quality of their lives. However, we know that diagnosis is currently opportunistic and ad hoc. If an adult hearing screening programme could be introduced for everyone over the age of 65, it would deliver long-term savings to the health and social care system. That would enable people to adjust to wearing and looking after hearing aids at a much earlier stage. Early identification and remediation would be much more effective than dealing with some of the issues that now arise from people who lack a diagnosis at the appropriate time.

Other noble Lords who will be speaking in this debate have far more expertise than I have in some of the issues that face deaf people. However, what unites us is an effort to raise in Parliament the question of services for deaf people and I hope that we will continue to do so in the future. I urge the Government to recognise that there is a need for a drive from the centre—from government—due to the diffuse nature of the services and the fact that people are spread around the country, which means that there may not be many people needing a particular service in a particular local authority area. I very much look forward to noble Lords’ contributions and to the noble Baroness’s response.