Help RAD DLC give free advice
This is a plea for donations to RAD Deaf Law Centre (DLC) to allow us to give free one-off advice to D/deaf clients on disability discrimination matters.
Over 700 D/deaf clients received advice on disability discrimination matters from RAD DLC between April 2008 and March 2011.
Since April 2008, RAD has been funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) Legal Grants Programme to provide legal advice and advocacy to D/deaf and hard of hearing people in England, Wales and Scotland. Between April 2008 and March 2011, RAD’s Legal Services (now DLC) team dealt with 479 enquiries and took on 228 cases on discrimination matters in the areas of employment, housing, education and goods, facilities and services. Altogether, over 700 individual D/deaf clients have benefited from this service, a phenomenal statistic.
Mainstream advice services are not able to meet the needs of D/deaf people. D/deaf people therefore rely on specialist legal advice services such as those provided by RAD DLC. By stopping the EHRC’s Grants Programme in March 2012, hundreds if not thousands of D/deaf individuals have been denied access to accessible legal advice on discrimination matters.
We have calculated that the approximate cost for RAD DLC to deal with one disability discrimination enquiry is £18.52. We need to raise this money as we do not currently receive any funding to provide this type of legal advice, and are unable to rely on central funds.
RAD DLC only needs £18.52 to give one-off advice to one Deaf client on disability discrimination.
So far we have raised £300, which will allow us to give 16 D/deaf clients free one-off advice. While this is great news for 16 clients, we would like to raise at least £1,000 in order to be able to give a total of 50 clients one-off advice on their disability discrimination issues. Obviously, the more we raise, the more clients we can advise.
A team of individuals, including RAD staff, freelance interpreters and supporters, are walking 10km on Monday 21 May 2012 to raise money for this vital cause in the London Legal Support Trust’s London Legal Walk 2012. More information can be found here.
Reasonable adjustments
Following on from my previous post about my hospital visit on Monday and the hospital’s failure to provide an interpreter, I thought it would be useful to set out the position in relation to the Equality Act 2010′s duty to make reasonable adjustments imposed on service providers.
Let’s make one thing clear: hospitals (and any other medical services such as GP surgeries, physiotherapists etc., regardless of whether it’s free or private) do and have an obligation to make reasonable adjustments for Deaf patients. Don’t let them tell you otherwise.
The duty to make reasonable adjustments is not always clear cut, but as a general rule, adjustments have to be made by a service provider as long as it is reasonable.
What is reasonable depends on the particular circumstances of each and every case, but it will take into consideration:
- The financial resources of the service provider AS A WHOLE (ie not individual departments for instance);
- How practical it is to make the adjustments;
- The costs of the adjustment; and
- The availability of external funding or grants.
We all know that NHS Trusts, Primary Care Trusts (or GP Consortia as they are now known) and other medical services have budgets that run into millions of pounds, so the last thing you should expect to hear is: “Oh, we can’t afford it!”.
The key message is this: informed consent. It is paramount that medical professionals obtain patients’ (or their next of kin) consent before embarking on any medical procedure unless the threat to their life or well being requires immediate intervention. A failure to do so opens up the NHS Trust or equivalent to legal action on the grounds of negligence.
It therefore baffles me why I see this issue cropping up time and time again; medical professionals or their staff routinely failing to provide interpreters. It’s for their benefit as well as Deaf patients. Also they can communicate effectively with the patient to find out their history, ails, pains, difficulties in order to provide the best treatment for them. You’d think medical professionals would WANT interpreters present all the time.
What is the cause of this innate inability or unwillingness to provide interpreters and make life that much easier for Deaf patients? Does the Hippocratic oath not matter to them? Don’t they CARE about their patients? Are NHS staff really so disillusioned working within the NHS that they no longer give a shit about patient care and obtaining consent? What makes them think they know what’s best for Deaf people?
I would strongly urge you to sign the Give Deaf patients access to appropriately qualified sign language interpreters petition. I have.
Hospital visit
I mentioned in my Vertigo post that the hospital visit on Monday was a long story. Well, here goes.
Monday morning, as my vertigo reared it’s ugly head in a big way, Rachel phoned the GP surgery and requested a home visit as there was no way I was going to be able to get myself down to the surgery and sit up in the waiting room waiting for an appointment). It was clear that the GP couldn’t be bothered to come see me, and told Rachel (via the receptionist), that as my vertigo had come on so suddenly, I should go down to A&E.
The difficultly again was getting down to A&E, a 15 minute drive and a hospital notorious for being a car parking nightmare, and then a wait for gawd knows how long in A&E to be seen. NO THANK YOU. So Rachel requested an ambulance.
By 3.30pm, the ambulance still hadn’t arrived, so Rachel took the decision to upgrade the ambulance request to a 999 call and an ambulance arrived within 15 minutes. The paramedic managed to get me into the ambulance and off I went to hospital.
Upon arrival, I found myself lying on a trolley in a corridor. Yes. A corridor. Seemingly, A&E were really busy and so I had to wait my turn. Eventually after about 20 minutes I went into an initial assessment cubicle, had my BP checked and bloods taken by a nurse who said that she remembered me from primary school. I didn’t have any recollection of her, but she did look familiar. Remember that I was pretty out of it with the vertigo, mind.
Shortly thereafter, I was moved, back into the corridor. No explanation, no idea as to why or how long I would be in the corridor for. Rachel asked the same nurse to arrange for an interpreter to come before I was seen by the doctor. The nurse had the audacity to say that she wouldn’t arrange an interpreter because we “didn’t need one”! Rachel made it clear that it was OUR choice not hers and gave her a telephone number to ring for the staff at the hospital who arrange the interpreting support, after texting an interpreter who regularly interprets at the hospital for us.
Needless to say, we never had an interpreter for the whole duration of our visit.
I was moved to another room and was consulted by a doctor who examined me and identified the excess wax in my left ear and said that we would need to wait for the bloods to come back and go from there. The doctor made it clear that my GP should never have suggested I go to A&E. Thanks for making me feel such a valued human being (!).
I then decided I needed a wee, and determined not to use the pee bottle, I sent Rachel out to find the toilet, and then made my way there holding on to Rachel. Had a wee, and made my way back to my room, and vomited int my mouth. I indicated to a nearby nurse that I needed a bowl pronto but she took her time about it!
I was given a jab in my thigh with a drug to reduce the nausea by a nurse, and had my BP and temperature checked every 30 minutes or so.
The blood results came back and I was discharged, and given a prescription for what we thought was ear drops (for the wax)and some tablets to combat the vertigo, with a few tablets to keep me going until the next day as by now it was past 6pm, as the local pharmacy had by now closed. I’ve no idea why they couldn’t have just used the hospital pharmacy to give me the drugs.
So off home I went in my dad’s car, who had kindly come to pick us up. Not a pleasant journey lying down in the back of the car.
The next day, dad-in-law went to pick up the drugs from the chemist, only to discover the prescription slip hadn’t been stamped properly and could not be redeemed, so the chemist said he would consult with the GP surgery. It turned out that the prescription was just for the ear drops. Erm, what about my vertigo?!
So off I went to see my GP on Tuesday and you know the rest.
Now. The whole sorry episode was just pathetic. Here I was with waves of vertigo rendering me incapable of doing very much, and the NHS has a lot to answer for. This game of “it’s not us, it’s them”, the long wait for an ambulance, the indignity of having to wait my turn in a corridor, the refusal by the nurse to arrange an interpreter, no cups being provided with a jug of water, no vomit bowls provided as standard (bearing in mind I clearly had vertigo), a mucked up prescription, unclear instructions as to what to do next, and above all, the general feeling I had that I was just wasting everyone’s time.
Thanks for that, NHS. Good to know my taxpayers money is going towards such high standards of patient care. Thanks for making me feel like a worthless human being not worthy of your time or attention when I needed you.
Can social media beat Deaf apathy?
This article was written by me originally posted on the Limping Chicken website on 23 April 2012. You can see it here.
For those of us who are associated with the Deaf community, it’s a well known belief that apathy is one of the biggest barriers we face.
What this means is basically this: if there are negative reforms targeted at Deaf people, whether directly or not, such as the impact of changes to Disability Living Allowance, cuts to legal aid funding, cuts to local authority-funded services etc, they usually pass by without so much of a whimper from Deaf people.
Why?
The general consensus is apathy. People either feeling they can’t make a difference, or not being willing to try. Some say it has got worse since the recognition of BSL as an official language
What changed after 18 March 2003?
Here are a few factors I believe may have made a difference.
- The demise of the Federation of Deaf People – this voluntary organisation spearheaded many of the BSL marches that occurred before the recognition of BSL.
- The lack of a strong campaigning organisation to equal FDP since it’s demise. Now the British Deaf Association have a clear vision for the future many are hoping they will pick up the mantle.
- A lack of deaf identity in young people. More and more Deaf children are being mainstreamed, taking them away from the Deaf community and most importantly, Deaf politics.
That’s not to say that there hasn’t been periods of protest or campaigning activity among the Deaf community since: the Stop Eugenics and Save Deaf Studies campaigns and the emergence of the group Deaf Parents Deaf Children (who released this YouTube hit video of a mother and daughter signing) spring to mind.
However, these are few or far between, and rely on Deaf individuals who are willing to expend their time and resources to lead a campaign.
Apathy was the subject of a brief exchange of tweets on Twitter recently, and it was suggested that social media and virals need to be embraced more.
The power of social media was plainly obvious following the broadcast of the Deaf Teens: Hearing World BBC programme which launched the “limping chicken” phenomenon.
Within hours of broadcast, the Deaf community was afire with jokes, amateur video clips, and social groups courtesy of Twitter and Facebook.
It was THE talk of the Deaf community for a few weeks and for that brief time, there was a genuine feeling of unity among all D/deaf people.
It even inspired the name of this very website and has arguably become part of UK Deaf community culture. For example, Deaf people who regularly use interpreters will now as a matter of routine ask interpreters who are late for an assignment whether their chicken was ill!
So, the future is bright. We know it is certainly possible for the Deaf community to unite for a brief period of time. The trick now is to harness the opportunity that has presented itself through the use of social media and virals to bring some real change for Deaf people.
We now need someone or a group to lead these changes. Perhaps a resurrection of the Federation for Deaf people is on the cards? Or can a Deaf organisation lead the way?
Let’s see.
Vertigo
Whoa. These last 5 days I’ve been subject to the biggest vertigo attack I’ve ever had in my life, and it shows no sign of abating.
It all started 12.25pm on Sunday as I was about to leave Rachel at home and take the kids to see Nanny and Grandad for Sunday dinner. I bent down to fetch something off the floor, and as I stood upright, I felt a wave of vertigo come on me. I thought nothing of it and put it down to getting up too quickly.
However, as the day drew on, I was still feeling lightheaded. Nonetheless, I carried on as normal, and I think it was for that reason Monday came round where I was incapacitated by the vertigo and slept most of the day in bed. By 4pm I was carted off to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport in an ambulance (I couldn’t bear to sit up in a car or have to sit in casualty waiting to be seen). Thankfully I was given the all clear after a battery of routine tests and sent home (the hospital visit itself is another story) with a diagnosis of left ear full of wax causing vertigo. Rachel and I weren’t convinced.
Tuesday I managed to get myself down to the GP surgery who diagnosed labyrithitis and who said in all his years of his experience he has never known wax to cause vertigo this bad, so the doctor in A&E was basically talking rubbish.
I was prescribed Serc tablets with some Semotil for nausea (which I haven’t had to use thankfully) and signed off work for a minimum 1 week.
It’s now Thursday and I still feel dizzy. I’m bored. I can’t play with the kids, I can’t walk around the house without feeling dizzy and needing a lie down, I can’t even watch TV or go on my laptop. I have been able to use the iPhone, Blackberry and iPad though, so that’s something. I think it’s cos they’re one dimensional.
I had an Employment Tribunal deadline yesterday and so was forced to do some work on that (thankfully a Deaf law student on a work placement this week did a sterling job getting all the facts together for the Grounds of Complaint for me, saving me the job) using my laptop, but boy was it hard. Drafting and submitting an ET1 claim is second nature nowadays, but boy, it sure hit me how much concentration and mental capacity was involved in preparing it because I felt simply awful after each session working on it.
This week has made me realise how much we take what we are able to do on a daily basis for granted. I’m missing the kids even though I’ve been home all week – quite ironic really – simply because I can’t play and interact with them like I normally do; feed them, bathe them etc. poor Rachel has been SuperWoman all week; looking after the kids and poor old me!
I should mention that the family has rallied around too, with big thanks to my mum and dad, Rachel’s mum and dad, Kirsty and Oliver, all offering their help and support this week.
Now I just wish this bloody vertigo would go away so that I can get back to normal.