This was the second of two Seminars on ‘Independent Living’.
Marie
Birkenhead, National President, attended the
seminar, with members and guests from East Midland Region
branches.
Lesley Knight, Director of the Northants and Rutland
Mission to the Deaf, spoke about Education for the Deaf.
She used British Sign Language which was interpreted
through the voice of her partner Michael Knight.
Lesley was very concerned that, for a long period, deaf
children had been deliberately deterred from using Sign Language
to communicate. There was evidence, having
been obliged to depend on lip-reading, that many deaf pupils were
leaving school at well below the educational level of their
hearing peers. Where, currently, deaf children communicate and are
taught through Sign Language there is evidence that standards do
not lag significantly behind hearing students.
Lesley, who is active in a number of organisations working
for deaf people, including the Federation of Deaf People, strongly
believes that the best way of educating deaf children is in
separate units running parallel with, but within, mainstream
schools.
Mike
Knight, Manager of Communications Services in Leicester and a
British Sign Language interpreter, demonstrated the use of Video
Phones for the Deaf. This system, installed by British Telecom, is being used by
two hospitals and a number of surgeries in Leicester to enable
Sign Language interpreters to save both time and cost to local
services by interpreting for deaf patients without the need to be
present. This scheme has been welcomed and would, it was hoped, be
extended.
Anne
Pridmore, severely disabled by Muscular Dystrophy, spoke of the
battle she had won for those needing twenty-four hour care to be
funded so as to enable the individual to buy in the care most
appropriate to their needs.
Finally,
Jackie Hodgkins, who has suffered from Multiple Sclerosis for 25
years, spoke about Dogs for the Disabled, an organisation that
receives no external funding. Jackie gave a warmly humorous
description of the care with which dogs are trained, how they are
then matched “in personality” to the owner, who is then
trained in the use of the dog in their own home. Her stories of
her relationship with her dog and her sadness when she felt she
was no longer able to provide the independence that the dog
needed, were both funny and moving.
The
two Seminars, and the discussion which followed each presentation,
provided a new perspective for those who attended not only into
the lives of people with different types and levels of impairment,
but also an insight into how some of the speakers perceived their
interactions with those who are lucky enough to be able-bodied
An edited
transcript is available contact Sheila Jones 0116 241 2629 or
email sheliojo@aol.com
