Actress Pam St. Clement who played the formidable cockney battleaxe Pat Butcher in Eastenders has gone deaf for the day to raise awareness and money for the charity Hearing Dogs for the Deaf, reports the Watford Observer.
“I could not hear a lot of things. Being in a cafe was difficult, I could lip read when it was one person to concentrate on but when it was two people, I lost half the conversation.” said Pam who lives in Radlett, Hertfordshire.
“That sort of concentration is very exhausting.”
Hearing Dogs for the Deaf trains dogs to help alert deaf people to environmental sounds like the doorbell or smoke alarm and is raising money to train more dogs to meet the demand for their services.
For more information or to donate, click here
The Limping Chicken’s supporters provide: Deaf Theatre (Deafinitely Theatre), Sign language interpreting and communications support (Deaf Umbrella), online BSL video interpreting (SignVideo), captioning and speech-to-text services (121 Captions), online BSL tuition (Signworld), theatre captioning (STAGETEXT), legal advice for Deaf people (RAD Deaf Law Centre), Remote Captioning (Bee Communications), visual theatre with BSL (Krazy Kat) , healthcare support for Deaf people (SignHealth), specialist lipspeaking support (Lipspeaker UK), deaf television programmes online (SDHH), sign language and Red Dot online video interpreting (Action Deafness Communications) education for Deaf children (Hamilton Lodge School in Brighton), and a conference on deafness and autism/learning difficulties on June 13th in Manchester (St George Healthcare group).
Linda Richards
June 27, 2013
Oh dear….. Another pathetic attempt at what it is like to be deaf….
Reminds me of the late and much missed late Dr John Denmark, psychiatrist at Prestwich Hospital who, on delivering a paper to a group of his peers, posed the worrying question of who would step into his shoes and cover the needs of Deaf people with mental health issues as there was no-one else in the field and urged them to think about this. Afterwards, one chap came up to him and said, “I’ve got half a day to spare … Maybe I could come along and learn what it’s all about” to which Dr Denmark replied, somewhat scathingly, “Tell you what, make it a day and then you’ll be an expert!”
No, no, no….this kind of ‘awareness’ is meaningless in relation to the linguistic challenges that face Deaf people. And just what the heck does her not being able to follow half the conversation mean in relation to a hearing dog for the deaf? Is the dog gonna jump up and tell her what she missed? Woof! Woof!