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BSL Blog 2 – ‘Wealthier and Fairer’

“Wealthier and fairer” must mean Access to Work for Deaf BSL users

One of the Scottish Government’s five strategic objectives is to make Scotland ‘Wealthier and Fairer’. One of the outcomes on which this will focus is to “realise our full economic potential with more and better employment opportunities for our people.”

So what can be done to create more and better job opportunities for Deaf BSL users? This is especially important at the moment, when the whole economy is in difficulties and most people are worried about their jobs. Deaf people are always at a disadvantage, so what must be done to improve BSL users’ prospects now?

The Scottish Government’s BSL & Linguistic Access Working Group has just published its Road Map to BSL & Linguistic Access in Scotland – ‘The Long and Winding Road.’

The Road Map explains what a lot of the difficulties are for Deaf BSL users in finding and keeping jobs, and suggests some of the things that must be done to improve the situation.

One of the most important provisions aimed at putting Deaf people on an equal footing with hearing colleagues in the workplace is known as Access to Work (ATW). This is one of the employment services that remain the responsibility of the UK government in Westminster. It’s through Access to Work that Deaf people can claim funding for interpreters or equipment to enable them to have full access.

Access to Work has been around for nearly 20 years. But many Deaf people are still not getting their rights under ATW. When it started, it appeared that only ‘the few’, high profile professional BSL users, realised the importance of claiming ATW. They had the proficiency in English language to realise the potential of this provision and utilise it to claim the support they needed. It took some years for this information about their rights to spread to other BSL claimants, and many still don’t know how to claim the support to which they are entitled.

A lot of this goes back to problems in Deaf education, which I dealt with in my last BSL Blog, ‘Education, Education’. But there is something more immediate that the employment services could do. The Roadmap points out that:

“…there is no mandatory training for employment staff or recognised qualifications and often they do not know how to book interpreters. Whilst there is an interpreting budget allocated for Access to Work it is reported there is sometimes a reluctance to use it, so there is pressure on deaf people to manage without a language service professional. This means young deaf people in particular do not go back to the job centre and it is a real barrier to work for young deaf people.”

The Roadmap also says:

“Lack of awareness by employers reduces the opportunities for employment and advancement in employment.”

To overcome these problems, the Roadmap recommends:

“Central and local government agencies to comply with (the Disability Discrimination Act) and provide deaf awareness and communication skills training for staff.”

Surely there can be no excuse for not doing this? We know that most employers lack Deaf awareness, so it’s essential that the employment services and agencies that work between employers and Deaf people should know better how to overcome the barriers.

Although there is no substitute for proper training, information has been available for some time that could be useful in helping employers and employment services to move forward, such as Bristol University Centre for Deaf Studies’ Signstation.

Deaf and hearing academics have talked and written about the problems, including the over-dependency of many Deaf people on benefits, which Dr Tyron Woolfe discussed as long ago as 2004 in the Supporting Deaf People Online Conference, in his paper ‘Employment and Deaf People – are we moving in the right direction?’
Weaning people away from unnecessary dependency on benefits is one of the key objectives of all governments, and it’s essential if Deaf people are to benefit from a wealthier, fairer society.

But as well as all of the above, we need far more BSL/English interpreters to provide Deaf people with fair and equal employment opportunities. The Roadmap makes it clear that many more interpreters must be trained to meet the needs, in employment as elsewhere.

The Roadmap points out that many hearing people get jobs by first of all doing some voluntary work. But a huge barrier for Deaf people who want to improve their skills through voluntary work is that, at the moment, they cannot claim Access to Work for voluntary work – so again there is inequality of opportunity between hearing and Deaf people. The Roadmap says:

“If Access to Work arrangements for deaf people could include voluntary work placements this would be a great boost to their skills development and would enhance their CVs and could lead to a higher number of deaf people entering employment.”

To promote its strategic objective of making Scotland ‘Wealthier and Fairer’ for Deaf people, like all its citizens, these are some of the issues the Government has to address, to give Deaf BSL users a fair chance of reaching the first rung of the career ladder to wealth.

We would like to know your views and what experience you’ve had that you might like to share with us, on Access to Work or any other employment issues. You can find out more about what the Roadmap to BSL and Linguistic Access has to say about employment and other issues in a BSL summary on this website. Or you can find the full Roadmap report in English on the Scottish Government’s website.