Following a shocking report on the health of deaf people, which was released last week by the Deaf health charity SignHealth, there will be a debate in the House of Lords today.
The debate will look at ways of improving the health of deaf people. SignHealth’s Sick Of It report shows that Deaf people have much higher rates of undiagnosed illness than hearing people do, and that even when a condition has been diagnosed it is likely to be poorly treated.
The reasons are a failure to supply sign language interpreters for consultations, difficulty getting an appointment in the first place, and a lack of accessible health information.
The Health Minister, Lord Howe, says Sick Of It is “immensely powerful”, and that, “it’s findings are very sobering … in fact, some of them I found very shocking”.
“There is no good reason why Deaf people should be twice as likely as hearing people to have undiagnosed high blood pressure; or why they should be more likely to have other undiagnosed conditions. That fewer than 15% of Deaf people say that their GP is good at listening to them, is something that concerns me very deeply.”
Lord Howe admits, “I can also assure you that the government recognises that a lot more needs to be done.”
The Labour Peer, Lord Hunt, the shadow spokesperson on health in the Lords, says the government “need to pull their fingers out, and get on with it and start to do something”. He believes that Monday’s debate will be “a great opportunity to raise the issues in the report, and to ask the Government what they are going to do about it”.
“It’s impossible to read this report and not feel shocked that the health service is systematically failing a section of our community like this,” says SignHealth’s Director of Communications, Paul Welsh. “Putting it right is not an expensive, or particularly difficult task. We’ve set out Prescriptions For Change in our report and they are simple. At the moment, the NHS is wasting £30m a year by missing diagnoses and failing to provide effective treatment.”
The Question for Short Debate, “on measures to be taken to improve the health of deaf people”, has been tabled by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede. It will take place at 7.30pm tonight.
Read the Sick of it report by clicking here.
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pennybsl
March 31, 2014
I sincerely, I do mean SINCERELY, that the well=paid peers do not bunk off before 7.30pm for the debate.
The issue has to recognise the ripple effects of unwell Deaf people being treated less than equally and fairly upon families, friends and communities, as well as colleagues and the workplace.
Darren
March 31, 2014
I think its wonderful that it has hit the heart of the house of lords particularly when Lord Howe voiced his concern. I agree that I hope the lords are in attendance for this much needed debate. Would be good to know what the outcome was.
Donkey
March 31, 2014
should also be noted that Video Relay Service’s are already available in some places like the local GP, in places such as Islington you can get an interpreter online in reception in less than 30 seconds…they use SignVideo.
Linda Parkin
March 31, 2014
Pity it’s such short notice – I would love to see some Deaf people, with interpreters, in the viewing gallery. It would make some of those debating stop and think! Anyone in London able to get there?
Natalya Dell
April 1, 2014
I wrote some template complaints to House of Lords about lack of real-time communication support on my blog at http://natalyad.dreamwidth.org/9511.html Nothing about us without us means that they should have found at least a BSL terp to cover it while broadcast or get it filmed as quickly as possible afterwards via someone like Team HaDo or SignVideo who must have been able to find a terp in 3 days…
The transcript of the debate is at http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/lords/todays-lords-debates/read/unknown/749/
I hope the House of Lords provides a BSL interpreted version of the debate for the people it was primarily about. I am conscious it was a lot of words which I see some people struggling to access fully.
I am still thinking about what I think of the transcript as it’s evident that some speakers did not understand that written English is not a good solution for many BSL users and some seemed to have an over hyped view of the success of cochlea implants etc and completely naive and over optimistic views on technology. Speech recognition is hard, turning that into text or BSL is not going to happen anytime soon in a reliable enough for medical scenarios manner.
Thankfully some sensible speakers did also cover the unique aspects of BSL and that some issues can be fixed without communication support, but with basic universal design principles of making things accessible for everyone like online booking, check in via screen, alert to appointment via screen etc which would help all deaf/HOH people.
Not impressed with the UbiDuo being touted for this, especially as many medics are dyslexic and one speaker who was dyslexic found he couldn’t access his half of it. Most people do not type fast enough for a good conversation even if the deaf person has the English for it. For many people I know BSL information sticks in their memory and makes more sense more easily for them.
I will be updating the Internet on response from the HoL to my complaint ana request for BSL versions and future deafness debates to be made accessible even if they won’t make the debates ALL accessible.