Insight: My Mother was told she couldn’t foster animals because she is deaf (BSL)

I am writing this blog on behalf of my Mother who is a BSL user and has asked me to tell her story to share with the deaf community. My Mum is a huge animal lover and growing up we had all sorts of animals in our house, cats, dogs, parakeets, guinea pigs, chickens – the only thing my Mum isn’t keen on is reptiles.

I remember growing up how my Mum would often take in abandoned or stray cats that were looking poorly, underfed or malnourished and after a few weeks of being in her care she would find a family looking for a new pet and off they would go to their new home.

We had several dogs and there was always a dog sleeping at the bottom of my bed each night, some were ours and some were also abandoned or homeless. We lived in a quiet town with a river than ran down the back of our house with fields and trees so it was a good space to have animals and we were lucky to have quite a bit of land around our house to play on openly.

I remember one day I heard a frenzy outside and our neighbours told me they had watched as some travellers had bagged up two puppies and thrown them into the river to drown. I told my Mum and watched as she  immediately ran down towards the river with a long stick determined to get the pups out.

The pups had been chucked inside a pillowcase which was knotted and thrown into the water. Fortunately the pillowcase had gotten caught on a rock on the side of the river so they weren’t flowing fast or rapidly away and my Mum managed to use the stick to pull the pillowcase out.

We sat on the grass and I followed my Mums instruction as she dried the pups with her hand rapidly, rubbing their backs and snuggling them into our necks when their breathing had calmed down. I remember the following weeks bottle feeding the pups with Mum and the bond we had with them was really quite special.

That story alone should tell you how dedicated my Mum is to animals, she is the kindest person.

Which is why a recent incident with an animal charity has left me feeling extremely cross. As my Mum is now retired, she has more time on her hands and has recently decided to apply to foster animals who need care while they wait for their forever family to find them.

I supported my Mum with this by checking the emails, making sure she understood what they had said and going along with her for the initial meeting at the centre. When we arrived the team seemed really surprised by her lack of ‘voice’ as she is a BSL user and they kept speaking directly to me to interpret.

I told the centre I only came along to support Mum as she does lipread and is quite good at advocating for herself and making herself understood. But I kept getting spoken to as though my Mum wasn’t even there. It was a very strange meeting in which Mum signed papers and then we left, being told they would get in touch.

They didn’t get in touch despite Mum sending emails, so I agreed to ring them with her next to me to find out what the delay was.

I managed to speak to a member of the team who was extremely ignorant. She told me that my Mum was not seen as a suitable foster carer due to her lack of voice. They said they had dogs who relied on cues and calls and as Mum wouldn’t be able to do that, they wouldn’t be referring animals to her.

To say I was outraged was an understatement. Here was my Mum who had taken in, fostered, rescued and looked after animals almost her entire life, and now a snooty little team were saying she couldn’t because she couldn’t speak?

I certainly gave them a piece of my mind and I also contacted the centre manager and PR manager of the charity to complain and suggest their team undertake some deaf awareness training urgently. How dare they say a person is incapable of caring for an animal due to their deafness.

Animals are intelligent intuitive creatures who have always been able to understand or follow my Mum. I could not see in any way why her deafness would affect her caregiving ability. It’s absolute madness.

I received a very ‘empty’ response from the manager apologising for the experience but also reiterating that they didn’t have the resources nor the funding to train a person who required ‘additional support.’

The whole experience has left my Mum and I flabbergasted but she hasn’t given up. She found another local animal charity and spends a lot of her time there, and she has since taken on 3 kittens who lost their Mum and need to be hand reared and bottle fed.

It baffles me how some people can still be so ignorant and so focused on what a person can or cannot do. Luckily for my Mum, animals always seem to understand her, it’s just the humans she can’t always work out!

This blog has been written anonymously as part of the Insight series – where readers are invited to share their story or news about their interesting job with The Limping Chicken. If you have a story to share please email rebecca@rawithey.com 

Image courtesy of i-stock photos.