Not equal: The experiences of Deaf people accessing health and social care in Sheffield
Need a BSL version of this report? Click here
Citizens Advice Sheffield’s Deaf Advice Team contacted Healthwatch Sheffield about a significant increase in the number of complaints they were being asked to help Deaf service users make about the provision of British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters at NHS appointment.
Advocates from Disability Sheffield were also supporting Deaf people who described being excluded from their own healthcare.
There had been a recent change in contract for BSL interpreter provision in Sheffield, and we wanted to investigate whether Deaf people had been involved in this decision, and how the changes had impacted on their experiences of accessing health and social care services in Sheffield.
We worked with Citizens Advice Sheffield, Disability Sheffield, and Sharon, a member of the local Deaf community, in order to organise workshops, where we spoke to approximately 75 people about their experiences.
See Sharon talking about the issues and the work we did together below:
Key findings:
• The communication needs of Deaf people are not routinely recorded and flagged by providers of NHS or Adult Social Care.
• The communication needs of Deaf people are not routinely shared between GPs and hospitals.
• Provision of British Sign Language interpreters is inconsistent and unreliable, causing people to disengage from services and to suffer unnecessary distress.
Our recommendations
Based on our findings, we had concerns about local Deaf people's access to services, and local services' requirements under the Accessible Information Standard and the Equality Act. We made the following recommendations to local health and social care commissioners and providers:
- Providers of NHS and Social Care should recognise the legal requirement to meet the five elements of the Accessible Information Standard (Identify, Record, Flag, Share, Meet) and ensure that they are embedded and consistently applied within their organisations.
- Commissioners should consider the use of measures and/or incentives to ensure the Standard is being implemented by providers.
- Contract monitoring of LanguageLine Solutions should include the experiences and views of Deaf people.
- Providers should ensure health and social care staff have at least a basic understanding of the needs of, and the problems experienced by, Deaf people and are aware of their responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010.
- Local providers should act to ensure information about their complaints and concerns processes is accessible and available in BSL, including information about NHS complaints advocacy.
We recognise that there is more work to be done in this area. We are currently planning follow up workshops with social care providers as previous workshops centred mostly around access to health services.
We will be following up these recommendations in order to ensure services are improving.
Downloads
If you need these documents in a different format, please email info@healthwatchsheffield.co.uk or call 0114 253 6688.
Not equal: The experiences of Deaf people accessing health and social care in Sheffield
Transcript from our BBC Radio Sheffield interview
Briefing from our follow up workshop, 23rd March 2018
Best practice leaflet produced at our follow up workshop, 23rd March 2018
Briefing from our follow up workshop focusing on social care
2021 update
We have continued to raise issues impacting on the Deaf community's access to care (including but not limited to British Sign Language interpretation) since this report. This has included focus groups with BSL interpreters, raising individual issues when we encounter them, and sharing Susan's story of when communication fails Deaf people.
In June 2021 we received an updated action plan from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, setting out what they plan to do to address these problems and improve access for Deaf people. Read it below:
