BSL Health Access, a video relay service (VRS) which enabled Deaf individuals to contact healthcare providers remotely, is to close at midnight, the deaf health charity SignHealth has confirmed.
Despite a petition calling for NHS England to further fund the service gaining more than 4,600 signatures, the NHS has confirmed that BSL Health Access will not receive anymore financial support.
Commenting on the news, SignHealth Chief Executive James Watson-O’Neill said: “We’re obviously devastated but determined to use the evidence we’ve gathered of how useful a VRS/VRI health access service can be to try and bring about long-term change.”
SignHealth previously told The Limping Chicken of its concerns over the future of BSL Health Access at the beginning of March, with NHS England funding running out at the end of the month.
The funding, covering December to March, came after SignHealth injected £800,000 of its reserves into the running of the service.
Speaking to The Limping Chicken last week, O’Neill said: “I think it’s dreadful that Deaf people are having a service withdrawn that is clearly so vital and clearly fills, to some extent, the communication gap. So that’s the first thing I’d say.
“NHS England have been fairly clear with us that their position is that this is the obligation of individual NHS providers, so we have no choice but to signpost people back to the specific organisation that they are accessing at that moment – whether it’s a hospital trust a GP surgery, whatever it might be.
“I accept that that is not a good enough response, but I would want the Deaf community to understand that that’s not us saying that, that’s NHS England, really,” he said.
BSL Health Access first launched in March last year, and data released to coincide with its one-year anniversary revealed that 61% of conversations through the service involved GPs, while 18% were held in hospitals.
Further statistics shown to The Limping Chicken also showed that BSL Health Access had a total of 6,141 calls in February, compared to just short of 2,000 calls in May 2020.
Photo: BSL Health Access.
By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.
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bozothewondernerd
March 31, 2021
An almost-inevitable consequence of devolved budgets – silo mentality creeps in and services that are clearly best and most economically operated at high/national/corporate level lose access to funding and die of starvation to be replaced with patchy less effective and more expensive ad-hoc facilities.
A very old quote that maybe does not comletely apply but which encapsualtes the sentiment is:
“Being effective is doing the right thing. Being efficient is doing the right thing better. Doing the wrong thing cheaper is not much help.”
Cathy
March 31, 2021
It is a shame to lose such a vital service at midnight tonight. However, the cost is truly astronomical. Does it really cost £800k from December to March? Good Lord! I can understand how NHS England have refused to fund it. In real terms other minority groups could start clamouring for the same amount of funding for this, that and the other! Where would England be then? I can understand why its not a viable option and making local authorities pay would make it much cheaper, given they would most likely be looking at how many Deaf BSL users they have in their area. Overall there has to be a cheaper option than this one.