Gavin Lilley: (BSL vlog) Why I decided to set up a BSL Watchdog page

In the BSL vlog below, Gavin Lilley tells us all about the BSL Watchdog page he has recently set up. An English transcript is below for non BSL users.

Hi, I’m Gavin Lilley! I’m from East London (near Essex – Ilford) I have a long line of deaf family, my parents are deaf and I have two sisters who are hearing – yet as they are CODA’s they’re fluent in BSL.

I’ve used BSL all my life, it’s my first language. I went to Mill Hall primary school then to Mary Hare secondary school which is an oral school for deaf pupils. I then went to college at Redbridge to study media where I was the only deaf student there.

Later on I felt drawn to working in sign language and had the idea of becoming a BSL teacher as I felt so passionate about the deaf community and deaf culture. So I decided to go to University in Preston, UCLAN. After completing my studies I began work as a lecturer, BSL teacher and qualified after completing my training over many years.

I then moved to Finland and had three children who now live in Finland. My two sons are deaf and my daughter is hearing. My partner of two years was from Estonia and a great support through this time.

I now have my own business which offers a range of services. I’m a qualified A1 assessor and a qualified teacher. I also work as a stand up comedian and in television as a presenter too. I love the variety of my work, I couldn’t do the same all the time!

More recently I set up a BSL Watchdog Facebook page. This was inspired after seeing so many false and unqualified BSL tutors, teaching made up signs and setting up businesses to teach. I saw one teacher online and thought “not again!” and I felt myself becoming angry. I really felt fed up of this and I know many others felt the same including my parents and friends – we all noticed a increase in this happening.

But I felt even after we expressed our concerns, the false tutors just carried on regardless. I felt we needed to take action.

Deaf organisations are fantastic and work so hard but they are limited by what they can do due to regulations and maintaining professional reputations and remaining neutral advocates for us. They aren’t able to take action and stand up against this, but I can. I want to put an end to this.

I firmly believe that the community as a group is powerful and by working with organisations, we can become even more empowered.

So the first step for me was to set up a Facebook Page called BSL Watchdog. I chose the name Watchdog as we all know the BBC Watchdog programme that monitors crime and disciplines criminals, and I felt we need a similar type of regulation for how BSL is being taught. There had been lots of conversations beforehand about this but no action as such.

Even though I am a native BSL user and consider it my first language I still spent years and years training to become a teacher and assessor, to fully understand and absorb the linguistics of the language and this training – although expensive – is vital for teaching the language well.

You can then imagine how I felt seeing someone without any training simply set themselves up as a tutor, and label what they’re teaching as BSL for a quick profit although in reality it’s just made up signs and could be anything!

I know this enrages many people in the deaf community and above all it’s a dangerous practice as it allows people to be taught incorrect signs which then gets learnt and disseminated.

Perhaps these people learning incorrect BSL then go on to work with deaf people or teach deaf children and are using these silly signs. I will not accept that.

The quality of learning that interpreters receive can also be affected by this sharing of incorrect BSL – this has a direct effect on the deaf community.

By sharing wrong signs the quality of accessible services are lowered as people may learn and use signs that make no sense.

Another factor to consider is these businesses just want to make a quick profit. Of course I support the set up of businesses, we need competition and to charge fees for a healthy economy.

But as someone with my own business, to ensure a high quality of service I’ve been through years of training and have the knowledge and qualifications required to properly teach and assess my students, informing them of deaf issues or topics relating to the deaf community. These sham businesses have none of these. Again, it is dangerous.

Some individuals have thousands of followers foolishly believing what they are signing is wonderful whereas I can see they don’t even possess a level 1 BSL qualification – and they call themselves an interpreter!

The constant misinformed praise these individuals receive is ridiculous yet they still succeed and make great profit. This bothers me as we see in the deaf community so many barriers still with deaf clubs closing, deaf schools shutting down and the problem nearly always comes down to ‘funding.’

The money wasted on these false BSL teachers should go to deaf schools, deaf children, those who are vulnerable and struggling with mental health, elderly deaf people and more. If you want to support deaf people or learn BSL or even teach BSL that’s fine, but please do it properly or even share information in a different way and know your limits.

So the aim of the BSL Watchdog page is to identify those who are delivering BSL teaching incorrectly and/or without qualifications and collect information.

I am still finding out how best we can put an end to these practices. The first question many people ask me when they join BSL Watchdog is “how can we put an end to this?!” In all honesty it will take time. We need to develop our work and practice and find out fundamentally if these individuals or businesses are breaking the law. Is it an act of discrimination? Is teaching made up signs against the law?

We now have an admin team working on BSL Watchdog and some of these have legal experience or knowledge of working within organisations and an understanding of the law.

We also have the BSL Act which recently passed so we need to explore how this can play to our strength and how to inform individuals or businesses that what they are doing is harmful, as some may not even be aware. Often with social media once you have posted something it later becomes forgotten but with the BSL Watchdog page it will remain there so the information will be collected and publicly visible which may enable us to eventually take more action. It is an ongoing work in progress.

I have also noticed that many deaf people who approach me to tell me about a sham BSL service prefer to do so anonymously. They are worried about being targeted or abused and I do understand this especially as the deaf community is small.

However this also makes me feel quite sad. Imagine for a moment I decided to teach the French language but instead of teaching it properly I just made it up. Naturally I would expect the French community to be outraged. I would anticipate complaints and even anger, they wouldn’t complain quietly they would be direct about it.

Although many deaf people do feel able to speak up and challenge the false practitioners, many others feel they can’t and that does need to change.

I hope the BSL Watchdog page encourages deaf people to feel comfortable reporting poor quality services or false BSL teachers. If you see something you feel is wrong or potentially damaging you can let us know and our admin team can take over from there.

I feel whether you are a deaf or hearing teacher – this aspect doesn’t matter – as the most important factor as a BSL tutor is the quality you deliver and the experience and qualifications you have as a teacher.

If you wish to set up a business or train others, we are here to support you. There is a wonderful deaf BSL community, so please work with this community and ensure you do the correct training to carry out the job properly.

You can find the BSL Watchdog page here