BSMHD Newsletter – January 2007  

The BSMHD 2007 Annual Conference will be held on Thursday 24 May 2007 at the Council House, Bristol. The programme is being developed and the delegate booking forms will be available shortly. For further details please contact Clare Long, the conference organiser, at [email protected] .

Please note change of venue. The 2007 Annual Conference will not be held in Edinburgh, as previously planned, so that we do not clash with the Scottish Council on Deafness Conference being organised for 15 May (see article below). It is anticipated that the 2008 Annual Conference will be in Edinburgh instead.

Abstracts of papers for consideration by the conference committee are requested on any subject relating to Mental Health and Deafness.

All presentations will be plenary sessions, presented in front of all conference delegates in a theatre style. The official languages for presentations will be English and British Sign Language. Simultaneous interpreting will be provided for all sessions between English and British Sign Language. All sessions will also have a verbatim speech to text transcription service.

Abstracts must be submitted by email attachment in text (.doc, .txt, .rtf) to [email protected] by 9 March 2007. The conference subcommittee will select the most appropriate presentations and a decision will be made by 31 March 2006. Full papers will be required by 11 May 2007 to give time for the communication support team to prepare for your presentation.

There will also be a small exhibition attached to the conference, organisations interested in booking exhibition space please contact Clare Long, the conference organiser, at [email protected] .

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Next BSMHD meeting – Leeds 27 March 2007

The next BSMHD meeting will be held in Leeds on 27 March 2007. The meeting will be an opportunity to meet staff from the Health Services and Deaf Organisations in the Yorkshire and Humberside Region and to finalise the plans for the 2007 BSMHD Annual Conference. BSMHD Meetings are open to all members and are free to attend. If you would like to attend please contact Jonathan Isaac, [email protected] . The summer meeting will be held in Birmingham in July. Further details will be available in the next Newsletter.

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Scottish Council on Deafness Conference – 15 May 2007

The Mental Health and Deaf & Deafblind People conference will take place at Celtic Park in Glasgow on Tuesday 15th May 2007 from 9am to 4pm. There will be speakers from the UK, Ireland and Europe and also workshops and a small exhibition. The conference will be co-chaired by Professor Peter McKenna, Chair of Psychiatry, University of Glasgow and Lilian Lawson, SCoD Director. For more details and a booking form, please contact Alison Coyle at SCoD, Central Chambers Suite 62, 93 Hope Street, Glasgow G2 6LD; tel 0141 248 2474; text 0141 248 2477; fax 0141 248 2479 and e-mail: [email protected].

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Healthy Deaf Minds

The next meeting of the Healthy Deaf Minds London Group will be on Wednesday 7 February 2007 at the Small Meeting Room, Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London (opposite Euston Station). The meeting will be about the BDA Counselling Service, presented by Hazel Flynn. In order to receive automatic Emails you only need to subscribe at: [email protected] . All meetings are on a Wednesday at Friends Meeting House, Euston. Starting at 6.30pm and finishing at 9pm. Full communication support, tea & coffee are available. Entrance fee is £4 to cover the cost of room hire.

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The next meeting of the Towards Equity and Access Implementation Panel will be on 19 March and will be the final meeting of the panel. An evaluation report will be produced and disseminated detailing the achievements of the panel. In April 2007 BSMHD will be establishing a successor panel to continue coordinating the progress that is being made in improving access to health services for deaf people and the development of specialist mental health services for deaf people.

If you are able to assist the Implementation Officers in their work please contact Herbert Klein or Lloyd Wint, The Bridge, Falcon Mews, 46 Oakmead Road, London SW12 9SJ.

[email protected] or [email protected] Fax 020 8772 3242 Voice 020 8772 3225 Textphone 020 8772 3241

The agenda and minutes and supporting papers of the TEA Panel meetings are available on the BSMHD website at www.bsmhd.org.uk/teaimp.htm .

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Many BSMHD members ‘attended’ the Mental Health and Deafness Online Conference organised by Direct Learn Services Ltd. We would be interested in receiving feedback from those of you that took part about online conferences and whether or not they are something that BSMHD should be looking at organising in the future.

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Welsh Mental Health and Deafness Reference Group

The BSMHD Welsh Mental Health and Deafness Reference Group have recently received the formal response from the Welsh Assembly to their recommendations for developing services for deaf people in Wales. The group will be meeting with officials from the Welsh Assembly on 23 January to discuss their response. Further details available from Nigel Bone - [email protected]

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QALYity Project

The QALYity Project is a new UK-based initiative that brings together key healthcare stakeholders to help support improvements in the quality of life of individuals with long-term conditions. It’s first objective is to find out what health campaigners’ opinions are on quality-of-life issues, what has been achieved, and what campaigners like to be achieved. You can give the Project your opinions on five questions about your organisation’s campaigns on, and research into, the quality of life of your members. You can answer these questions anonymously, if you wish, or you may choose to be attributed. Please return your response by the survey’s closing date of Friday, January 19th 2007. The QALYity Project plans to use the information generated to summarise the current state of opinion about the quality of life of people living with long-term conditions. The Project’s more long-term aim is to help bridge the gap between, on the one hand, the individual’s desire for improvements in wellbeing, and, on the other, the rulings of government agencies such as the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE). As a survey participant you will be sent a report on the survey results (February 2007).

To answer this short questionnaire go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=228893001738 . The questionnaire can then be answered online.

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Every child matters ….. don’t they? – Cumbria Deaf Association Research

Called: ‘Mentoring for Success’ this was a study to consider the feasibility of a mentoring scheme in Cumbria for young people with hearing loss.

In the Foreword to the Report John Brown, Chief Executive of the Cumbria Deaf Association, writes: I am delighted to write a forward to this study which is the culmination of three years of hard work. In the Autumn of 2003 as a result of our concerns about the number of young deaf people who were leaving school and were finding themselves underemployed or unemployed or struggling with the further education system we invited the key agencies involved to form a multi agency working group to consider how we could respond to the challenge that this presented to us all. It was agreed that a conference should be convened to hear from young people who have been through the system, leaders in the education field and employers. This took place in October of 2003, was very successful and resulted in a conference report being produced and an action plan. The steering group has been overseeing the process of delivering the action plan since then. The recommendations in this report provide us with an agenda which will keep us busy for the next three years and beyond! It is vital to young people who are deaf, especially when we are assured by the Government nationally and our County Council here in Cumbria that: ‘every child matters’ That we make sure that those words have real meaning and are not simply a powerful sound bite.

The full report is available for download from the CDA website at www.cumbriadeaf.co.uk

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Note: The articles that appear in this newsletter are for information only – inclusion does not imply endorsement of the contents by BSMHD.

The next edition of the BSMHD Newsletter will be sent out in April 2007. The deadline for sending articles is 1 April 2007. Please send by email to: [email protected]