Deaf News: Daughter who had to tell father he would die receives compensation from hospital trust

Posted on March 23, 2018 by


It has been reported that a family in Northern Ireland has received £7000 compensation after a dying man’s daughter had to tell him that his illness was terminal when a hospital did not provide a sign language interpreter.

This story mirrors that of Matt Dixon, who wrote a blog for this site about the same scenario with his own father.

Extract: (read the full story here)

The South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust has apologised and paid £7,000, without admission of liability, to the family of a profoundly deaf County Antrim man, now deceased, to whom they did not provide a sign language interpreter while he was in their care.

“My father, Thomas Carson, was taken ill quite suddenly and, because the hospital did not provide a sign language interpreter, I had to communicate the news to him that his condition was terminal and he was going to die,” Jillian Shanks, Mr. Carson’s daughter, said. “That was very distressing – for him, for myself and for my mother, who is also deaf and was with him throughout.”

Both the late Thomas Carson and his wife Mary are profoundly deaf and have always used British Sign Language as their first language. It is through that language that their daughter Jillian communicates with them.  The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland supported Jillian and her mother to bring a case under the Disability Discrimination Act over the Trust’s failure to provide interpretation services.

In settling the case the Trust has apologised for the upset and distress the family experienced and for the fact that, by not providing an interpreter to Mr. Carson, it had not acted in accordance with its ‘Policy on Access on Interpreting and Written Translation Services’.

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