BSMHD Newsletter August 2004

BSMHD Council Meeting - Deafblind UK, Peterborough, 29th September 2004

The next Council Meeting is being held at Deafblind UK in Peterborough on 29th September. The meeting will start at 11.00am and finish at 2.30pm. Following the Council Meeting there will be a BSMHD Trustees Meeting from 2.30pm - 3.30pm. In the morning there will be a presentation from our hosts about their work with deafblind people and there will also be a presentation from Penny Beschizza on 'Deaf Education Centres'. Council Meetings are open to members only and are free to attend. Please let Jonathan Isaac know if you wish to attend.

Cardiff Conference presentations now available

The PowerPoint Presentations from the Annual Conference held in Cardiff on 27th May 2004 are now available on Conference page.

Tees & North East Yorkshire NHS Trust - Mental Health & Specialist Learning Disability Review

Sensory Loss & Mental Health on 23rd August 2004 at Samsung Centre, Wynyard Park, Billingham. Further details on the Noticeboard.

Child Protection Conference

Tuesday 5th October 2004, 10.30 am - 4.30 pm at the Britannia Street Conference Centre, 27 Britannia Street, London, WC1X 9JP. Sponsored by SIGN: The National Society for Mental Health and Deafness.

Deaf parents who find themselves involved in child protection situations face many problems. Issues include lack of understanding of the process - either the legal or social services aspects, barriers in communication with professionals in health services, child and family teams, solicitors, lack of interpreter and advocacy support and the impact on the mental health of the child and parents. For further details go to the UK Council on Deafness website or please contact Sylvie Say [email protected]

Reaching Deaf Minds Campaign

Sign's campaign 'Reaching Deaf Minds' (RDM) has had 350,000 hits on its website www.reachingdeafminds.org.uk to date and is actively working in partnership with its endorsees to improve deaf well being within society.

Sign has become a registered centre to deliver tailor-made accredited Deaf Awareness and Communication Tactics training nationally to all health care staff to improve health care professional's effectiveness in how they deal with d/Deaf patients. Primary Care Trust's (PCT's) have shown interest in the free training Sign is offering which will be delivered later this year.

Sign has been trialling a Deaf Friendly Toolkit at two PCT's. This self- assessment checklist helps identify areas for improvement to health care services. Due to be completed by the end of the year, several PCT's have expressed an interest.

Reaching Deaf Minds in the Workplace is researching the working lives of Deaf people in the South of England, evaluating how inclusive and 'Deaf friendly' their workplace actually is. Responses to the project have been very positive and the Employers' Forum on Disability has now fully endorsed this piece of work. Interviews will begin 20th July onwards.

RDM visited Gillingham Deaf Club in June 2004 to promote the campaign and a new project, the Deaf Patient Involvement Forums (DPIF). The DPIF is a project run by Herbert Klein, Project Manager, that aims to train d/Deaf, or hearing BSL users to become 'Health Mentors' to Deaf People and representatives of the Deaf community at Public Patient Involvement Forums (PPIF).

For further information contact [email protected] or go to www.reachingdeafminds.org.uk

Deaf Child and Family Telemental Health Service

The Deaf Child and Family Telemental Health Service has now been up and running since the beginning of 2004. The service is currently based at the Deaf Child and Family Service, Springfield Hospital, London and the Deaf Child and Family Service, Limetrees, York. Later in the year a further team based in the West Midlands will come on stream. The service has been commissioned as a pilot by the National Specialist Commissioning Advisory Group.

The York service see children from York, Selby and North Yorkshire. In addition they see children and young people who attend Doncaster and St. John's Boston Spa School's. The West Midlands Service will see children from RSDC Derby, Braidwood and Longwill Schools in Birmingham and children from Dudley and Wolverhampton.

The York service have a multi-disciplinary team of deaf and hearing people, including psychiatry, social work, psychology, mental health nursing and family support. The London service provides support and supervision to the York service and direct clinical services, via videoconferencing, for deaf children and young people who use BSL. The Birmingham service is currently being recruited.

We are still in our early days but the service is developing well and has enabled a wider group of deaf children to access specialist services.

Healthy Deaf Minds

The meeting on Wednesday 9th June about AIDS/HIV was very lively and well attended. A full report can be found on the Healthy Deaf Minds page. The next meeting is on Wednesday 4th August at Friends Meeting House, opposite Euston Station, 6.30pm to 9.00pm.

BSMHD Council Meeting - Deaf Connections, Glasgow, 29th June 2004

The Council Meeting in Glasgow was attended by 11 members of the Society who were given a very interesting presentation by the Deaf Connections team about their health promotion work in Scotland. The PowerPoint presentation is now available. Many thanks to everyone at Deaf Connections for their warm welcome and hospitality.

Department of Health response to the Bad Ischl Declaration

We have received a response from the Department of Health to the ESMHD Bad Ischl Declaration. The full text of their response is available.

Action by Working Together 2004 Annual Deafness Conference - last call for papers

Tuesday 2nd November 2004, 10.30 am - 4.30 pm at the Britannia Street Conference Centre, 27 Britannia Street, London, WC1X 9JP

The conference will feature the latest research, showcase innovative projects, the findings of recent surveys and give examples of collaborative initiatives from across the full spectrum of deafness, resulting in a better understanding of the diverse activities of the many organisations working with deaf people across the UK. The theme of the Conference is 'collaborative working' and will feature the best examples of organisations working in partnership, either informally or as a consortium.

Organisations and individuals wishing to present at the conference must send by email a brief outline of their presentation to [email protected] by 15th August 2004.

There is also an opportunity to exhibit at the Conference. For further details go to the UK Council on Deafness website or contact Sylvie Say [email protected]

Interpreting In Mental Health

What can Spoken Language Interpreters and British Sign Language Interpreters learn from each other?

This half day workshop, a multidisciplinary collaboration between Clinical Psychology, Deaf Mental Health Services (Denmark House) and the Diversity Directorate of Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust, was haled a great success. It took place on Thursday 10th June 2004 in Birmingham and identified some of the problems faced by interpreters, service users and clinicians when working across more than one language in a mental health setting. There is a full report on the Noticeboard.

National CAMHS Support Service 2004

Facilitated by Ms Fiona Gale, CAMHS Regional Development Worker for East Midlands, to be held at the NEWSTEAD CONFERENCE ROOM, Tuesday 5th October 2004, 9.30 a.m. - 4.30 p.m.

Further details on the Noticeboard.

All-Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness

The Inaugural meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness was held on 15th June 2004. At the meeting Lord Ashley of Stoke was appointed Honorary President of the group and the Officers were elected:

Chair: Malcolm Bruce MP (LibDem)
Vice Chair: Tom Levitt MP (Lab)
Vice Chair: Tim Loughton MP (Con)
Vice Chair: Martin Smyth MP (UUP)
Vice Chair: James Gray MP (Con)
Vice Chair: Baroness Wilkins (Lab)
Secretary: Simon Thomas MP (PC)

The meeting was attended by 15 members of the group, which has over 160 members from both Houses of Parliament, making it one of the largest of the All-Party Groups at Westminster. The group have agreed their objectives and will be meeting approximately 6 times a year. Topics to be covered at the autumn meetings will include a presentation from Ofcom and an update on the promotion of BSL. Full details of the group's activities and future meetings can be found at www.appg-deafness.org.uk

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