Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure hospital staff can support British sign language interpreters to assist deaf patients.
Compliance with the Accessible Information Standard is a legal duty: organisations that provide National Health Service care or adult social care have been required to meet the Standard since August 2016. Compliance with the Standard is also a requirement of the NHS Standard Contract 2018/19.
Commissioners must actively support compliance by organisations from which they commission services and they must also seek assurance from providers with regard to compliance.
The Care Quality Commission, when inspecting providers, also looks at how services implement the Accessible Information Standard.