Week 9 was hosted by Tim Bonham-Carter, exploring the Technical Difficulties of

deafness.
Welcome to Technical Difficulties, this is Timothy Bonham-Carter and I'd like to
introduce myself, what I do
and why I'm on the show today. I work as an interpreter and also outside of this
I sit on the committee of
Walthamstow Deaf Club. I'm also very much an advocate for deaf individuals as I
very much understand the
issues they face every day, in all sorts of situations from the stigma attached
to being deaf to how they face an
ever increasing battle to get on in life. That brings me to my next point about
the new coalition government
and the deep cuts they are proposing, especially where services are concerned. A
lot of services are already
beginning to feel the noose being tightened on their budgets and being ordered t
o resize their operations or
merge them in with other services. For example, there is a service that I used t
o access as a youngster which
is now subject to these cuts. To read from a related petition: The Sensory Impai
rment Service in central
Bedfordshire is at serious risk of being cut. This could include removing preven
tative work for pre-school
children and a considerably reduced level of service for school aged children. E
arly year support is
fundamental to deaf children to allow them to develop alongside their hearing pe
ers.
Honestly, speaking from my perspective, I accessed this service as a youngster a
nd I got a lot of help with my
speech - otherwise I wouldn't be here today on this radio show, presenting. If i
t wasn't for those individuals,
who gave me a lot of 1 to 1 support, I wouldn't be here speaking to you today be
cause I have a severe hearing
loss of 60-70% in each ear. I have a great command of the English language and i
t's down to these individuals
who have helped me to be who I am today. They've given me the skills to progress
in life and also to become
a BSL interpreter.
What I want to say to you is: It really comes down to the beginning of your life
and the education you
receive. As the petition says, deafness is not a learning disability but governm
ent figures included in the
National Deaf Children's Society's "Hands Up for Help" report show that deaf chi
ldren in Eastern England are
40% less likely to achieve A-C grades at GCSE in English and Maths. We all know
that English and Maths
are really important for any kind of learning or any kind of knowledge we want t
o glean. We understand that
it is government policy to close this gap but without the current level of suppo
rt, this won't happen. It's a
really worrying situation for deaf individuals and the parents of deaf children.
It's something we really need
to be acutely aware of.
This Summer saw the closure of a deaf school which had been open for 60 years af
ter class sizes grew to 27
pupils and the government decided it couldn't stay open.The school had done a fa
ntastic job over 60 years but
now the pupils were sent to mainstream schools.
Mainstream schooling is really not the answer and the government really needs to
change its approach to
educating children, or anyone who is deaf. A lot of individuals I work with on a
 day-to-day basis have a very
low level of literacy and numeracy and therefore they have lots of problems in a
ny area of life from
communication to getting a job to filling in a job application, so this is reall
y going to impact on a lot of
people. I can't emphasise enough, it is vital that people receive a good solid e
ducation but some of those
providing the service are not deaf-aware and are therefore hindering the educati
on. At the moment there are a
vast number of deaf people out of work and on benefits and the government needs
to reassess its strategy. We
need to stop just giving people benefits and look at giving them an education an
d helping them better their
lives. They can go out there, they can be somebody and they can move forward wit
h their lives. At the
moment, a lot of deaf people take a back seat and say "What's the point getting
a job if I get these benefits.
The money I would earn will be marginal compared to the money from benefits".
The Government really needs to look at how it can make the situation better for
deaf people generally.
The Times newspaper reports that £9bn a year could be slashed from the benefit budg
et by merging a series
of benefits such as Incapacity Benefit and Housing Benefit into a single benefit
, a large chunk of which has
already been promised to Iain Duncan Smith to finance the charges. The Treasury
had already previously
announced plans to cut £2bn by introducing a means test to IB and demanded an extra
£2.5bn is cut from the
Employment and Support Allowance which has replaced IB and will eventually takeo
ver for existing IB
recipients. The introduction of ESA has been a problem for the deaf community be
cause many deaf people
can pass means-tests because they have no mobility issues. However, they have co
mmunication problems.
The government really needs to look at how to change that.
The Royal National Institute for Deaf People released a report in May 2000 sayin
g that a hearing impaired
individual in the UK is more than twice as likely to become unemployed as a pers
on with normal hearing.
Data showed that 15% of hard of hearing people are unemployed, compared to 6% of
the hearing population.
In the 25-45 age bracket, 22% of HoH people are unemployed - more than four time
s the rate amongst people
with normal hearing in that age group.
We need to have another survey, this data is over 10 years old and we need to fi
nd out what's going on out
there because from my day to day work with deaf people in Jobcentres, I can see
there's a lot of deaf people
out of work so we really need to look at targeting that group to get them back i
nto work.
In the earlier survey, 77% of respondents said being deaf had prevented them get
ting a job. I've had first hand
experience of this. If you state on a job application that you have a disability
then the company is bound to
give you an interview under the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act.
Deaf people are very visual and can read body language well because they have le
arned to compensate for
hearing loss by increased visual awareness. So at mandatory interviews I've had
I can clearly tell at the very
start that they don't want to give me the job but they have to interview me beca
use of rules and regulations (or
red tape, if you like).
This is what we face every day as deaf people. We need to change the preconcepti
ons that people have about
deaf people and really we need to have some kind of training to make employers a
ware of how to deal with
deaf people and we need to have deaf awareness within the workplace and within s
ociety at large because a
lot of society doesn't know about deaf people. I've met hearing people who've ne
ver met a deaf person in their
lives before and they quite clearly don't know how to deal with that situation.
They're frightened of how to
deal with a deaf person because it's a frightening situation. We need to make th
at understood. The RNID
survey said that 68% found that looking for work was a problem because their com
munication needs were not
understood. Employers need to be aware of Access To Work - a government funded i
nitiative to ensure that
people have the tools available to do the job, like communication support (wheth
er it be a typist, sign
language interpretor, note taker, Minicom or computers) to allow them to communi
cate with their colleagues.
Access to Work has been a success over 5 to 10 years and a lot of deaf people ar
e benefiting from that. A
major hurdle that many deaf people have is trying to get the job in the first pl
ace, so we need to overcome
that - it's something the government also needs to look at. The RNID survey said
that with increasing
unemployment, HoH people are twice as likely to be unemployed as they were four
years previous, despite
the DDA being passed in that time. The survey asked 10,000 deaf and hard of hear
ing people who use the
TypeTalk telephone relay service.
TypeTalk is not really suitable for BSL users because that language has its own
linguistics and therefore
English is not their first language and BSL's visual emphasis means that the int
erpreter at the other end may
not fully understand what the deaf person wants. So the service doesn't really w
ork for the 70,000 BSL users
in the UK. An added problem is that there are only 500 fully qualified BSL inter
preters in the country. France
has 400,000 deaf people and 250-300 interpreters. There are not enough. In Franc
e they have the quality but
not the quantity.
In the UK, as well as interpreters we have communication support workers - but q
uite a lot of CSWs aren't
good at communicating properly because they have no awareness of deaf culture an
d issues. 20 years ago, a
lot of interpreters were CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults) who interpreted through
life experience whereas
many people now are interpreting English verbatim. This is not the service level
BSL users expect. Deaf
people have to put up with the service they get. This bad service often causes m
isinformation and it dis-
empowers deaf people because they would rather say nothing in case it made the s
ituation worse, closing
themselves off from the situation. This is quite detrimental to them, even if th
ey don't realise it's having an
impact. The Government only recognised BSL in 2003 and it needs to wake up to th
e impact.
There has been a dramatic rise in the use of cochlea implants for children as yo
ung as 3,4 or 5 because the
government sees it as a way to avoid long-term use of (quite frankly very expens
ive) interpreters. The
Government thinks that by spending £40,000 on one operation, they will save money i
n the long run. Well, I
don't think they are going to save money in the long run because when you see a
child with a CI - they're
using BSL not spoken language so the government will still have to pay for an in
terpreter in the long run.
Does this really solve the problem? That is a question I pose to the government.
People need to get involved,
and ask questions of local MPs.
To change to something lighter, my hobby is music production and DJ'ing and I am
working to bring Sencity
to the UK. Sencity is a multi-sensory event which has been running since 2003. I
t homes in on all the senses
of a deaf person and is designed to be inclusive. We want deaf people to meet he
aring people and
communicate freely on the night of the event. It was founded in the Netherlands.
They wanted to integrate
deaf people into a music event and have since had nights in Brasil, Jamaica and
most countries in Europe.
Now we're going to have the first one in London in 2011 and I'm an integral part
of that group.
We want to reiterate that music is accessible to deaf people. They can't hear bu
t they can feel the vibrations
and the bass. They have just as much of a good time as a hearing person does. De
af people have a social life
like others, going to pubs, clubs, theatres, art events, night clubs. We're all
human beings at the end of the
day. We can enjoy music just as much as anyone else, and I also produce despite
being deaf. It's great having
that outlet through music. Music is great because everybody needs it to escape a
nd it helps deaf people
escape. We all need to have a form of escape. We can work all day long but we ne
ed to have some form of
escape to make us relax. Deaf people use music as much as hearing people would a
s a relaxation tool but they
have to go to a nightclub to experience it as deeply as a hearing person may at
home.
I have a guest with me in this final part of the show.
DJ: Hello, my name's David Jennings and I'm a singer-songwriter. I've just been
signed to 371records.com.
I'm also working with Mind on a mental health music festival on the 23rd of July
next year. 50p of the
proceeds from my new single will also go to fund the festival. The event will be
people with mental health
problems and various disabilities performing live and selling their art on stall
s to encourage entrepreneurial
engagement. We are aiming to show people with mental health problems don't have
two or three heads. I'm
aiming to curate and expand it. Please drop me a line.
TBC: How long have you been doing music?
DJ: About 20 years, with various groups of disabled people. I've performed at ev
ents such as the Basingstoke
Festival and various festivals around London.
TBC: So, do you see yourself as a role model for other mental health and disabil
ity musicians?
DJ: Well, most artists have mental health problems. including some of the most s
uccessful musicians in the
country at the moment and a number of classical artists in the past.
TBC: Of course, Van Gogh for example. Well, let's hear some of your music.
DJ: Sure, this was produced by up and coming film producer Cliff Bradley - who w
on a joint-prize at Cannes.
Richard Clarke is the guitarist.
MUSIC: Beautiful Sea - David Jennings
Thank you very much David. I'm Timothy Bonham-Carter for the Technical Difficult
ies crew. Wear your
scars with pride and remember, we all have technical difficulties ahead. Goodbye
.