Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what training is provided to (a) healthcare workers and (b) social care workers to communicate appropriately with deaf people.
The standard of training for all regulated health care professionals is the responsibility of the health care independent statutory regulatory bodies. Higher education institutions’ curricula content enables their students to meet the regulators’ outcome standards including how to communicate with deaf people.
Under the Equalities Act 2010, mandatory employee training and monitoring compliance with equality and diversity policies are the responsibilities of employing organisations. To support the training of staff, Health Education England produces e-learning for healthcare modules to assist and support mandatory training and has dedicated sessions on communicating with deaf people within their modules.