BSL Hub..

I came across a programme whilst searching through the sky tv listing for something to watch a programme called BSL hub which interested me as obviously with me having a  bilateral sensorineural hearing loss ,things like this interest me and always have done , but especially now I’m growing up and learning more about my conditions and gaining more of an understanding of things .I had no idea what this programme was about but thought it might be worth the watch to learn more about BSL (British Sign Language) as I’d love to learn to sign fluently and have it as a second language and form of communication .

 

Anyway I quickly realised it was a series and in this particular episode , I don’t know if this is what’s in all of them but in this particular episode it was talking about the issues of BSL being a language and being recognised and also about BSL and education and the issues there , Like I say I’ve never heard or seen this programme before and I don’t know if all of the episodes are about issues relating to BSL or BSL users .I thought I’d write a blog on it as it was quite informative and I know I defiantly learnt a lot that I didn’t know before and it may be of interest or of help to you .

 

 

To start off the programme was talking and highlighted on kids who are deaf and use BSL and about their education and the programme found that the number of deaf children who achieve 5 GCSE’s or more has deteriorated and whether people choose to believe it or not deaf kids really do have the same dreams and ambitions as any fully hearing child does with regards to their future and work .However sadly its feared that these dreams and ambitions of those who are deaf could be threatened which was discovered by the NDCS and this is due to the cuts to deaf services  and  these cuts are taking an impact and that is now showing in life  and the figures in March 2013 showed that 36% of all councils will have made  cut to the education services with more than half of these cuts resulting in fewer teachers of the deaf and services for deaf children which is quite worrying and alarming in itself .

 

The hosts on the programme spoke to some deaf teenagers who either were about to take GCSE’s or were around that age and some who had taken their GCSE’s already to see how they  felt and what they thought education services are like for deaf children as who would know better than deaf children themselves how much support and help they are receiving? .The teens on the programme said  that for English,Maths and Science (the core subjects for GCSE)  that a lot of the curriculum had been cut or was too hard and they were not receiving any extra help or support  and they felt their education could have been better if they were offered help and support as for these teens BSL is their first language and so they need help to understand the English for the lessons and exams .

 

95% of parents  fear that the education cuts will affect their deaf child’s  education.An 92% of parents of deaf children interviewed felt that their child would grow up  feeling isolated due to the cuts .

 

NDCS has challenged the government about this  but they don’t seem to be understanding or helping although the government say they will provide help and support for special education needs  but the issue is that the help and support that would benefit  such as teacher of the deaf are being cut on a daily basis.The programme asked education ministers to take part in the show and to give their side  but they declined the offer , However they wrote the following response:

 

 

“Councils must target funding at the most vulnerable children who need it most including deaf children ,they have a statuary duty  to identify children’s special needs and provide the services to meet them we’ve protected schools cash levels nationally and made sure local authorities can maintain specialist SEN provisions”

 

 

The programme spoke to some of the best rated schools by ofstead and they said that the kids with deafness using BSL are classed as SEN (special education needs)  and they were saying how those children require a teacher of the deaf  and a classroom assistant to help them in lessons in schools so that they are receiving the correct support and care as the classroom assistant is there to help to make sure they have understood the lesson instructions and to help go over things and to make sure they do understand what they need to do etc. These schools even said how they noticed how their deaf pupils  are falling behind due to lack of help and also early intervention and that due to the cuts it’s severely affecting staff levels which obviously then comes back to affect education.

 

 

Robin who himself is deaf and has six deaf children said that he feels that the education of deaf children is falling and has been falling over the years due to low standards and that deaf staff levels varies and he felt strongly that there are other issues not just education .The programme tested some kids from a variety of schools some from mainstream schools and some from deaf schools and only two out of 23 of the kids had the age appropriate reading age which is a really alarming and shocking thing as all 23 of those kids should have the right age appropriate reading age and it really does make you think how has this been allowed to happen , how has no one picked up on it before and done something?

 

Robin said that he feels a major review of deaf children is needed and to call in everyone involved in deaf education and to try to identify why deaf education levels and grades are dropping and to try to help to regain them at the same level as what fully hearing children’s education is .Robin feels to do this it may mean involving all deaf people  and to get people to hear and understand the difficulties amongst the deaf communities to help educators realise their mistakes in order to help make changes for the better.

 

Between 100,000 and 150,000 people use BSL according to a 2010 poll .However a lot of deaf people didn’t sign the census as they couldn’t read the print or they required help in completing the forms as BSL was their first language so this number may not even be accurate.However the bizarre thing was that the 2011 census said that only 22,000 people use BSL.

 

I just feel that as does the programme that BSL needs more recognition in the next 10 years before the next census as that’s a worrying figure compared to how many people actually use BSL because obviously 22,000 isn’t the accurate number and that’s worrying  as were not seeing the real number of people and if were not seeing the real number of people who use BSL  and the deaf are being classed as a minority  and then this will allow further cuts to be made .When in actual fact the deaf are not in the minority and if they real number were accurate then at least it would be there documented how many people actually use ,need and rely on BSL and hopefully then it will make the government realise that the cuts to the deaf services are deeply affecting the deaf community and then things hopefully would be able to be turned around and sorted for the better.

 

BSL is actually recognised as its own language , 10 years ago people marched through Trafalgar square to raise awareness of BSL and to get it recognised and it was described to be like a sea of people all signing and was like a powerful movement signifying how many people really are apart of the deaf community .People from all over  had congregated and people were lobbying using banners etc lobbying about their rights and to get BSL to become recognised .This was achieved and before this BSL was just seen as a way of communicating with the deaf and not as a language ,Although even thought it’s now a recognised language there are still issues such as people are still finding it near impossible to find jobs if they are deaf and use BSL.

 

The programme highlighted that deaf people and deaf organisations know that they have to lobby for the recognition ,which the government cannot understand  why we need a BSL act ,as they feel by providing teachers of the deaf is enough help and support and so cannot get their heads around why deaf people and deaf organisations are lobbying .Things have been quiet the past 10 years or so with respects to lobbying .However things might be changing now for the better and campaigns may be starting to occur again,It was expected in one previous campaign that around 1,000-2,000 would join but quickly in less than a week or so it went to beyond 10,000 , so you can see just by that figure how many people do care and what things to change for the deaf communities.It is vitally important for everyone to get onboard deaf or not and to work together and help to .

 

There is a growing frustration that since BSL became a recognised language of its own  that not much has changed nor has a lot happened and so now there are plans to lobby and campaign for it to become a legal act as this would help to make people equal and deaf  people are still humans and have rights like everyone else as do they have dreams and ambitions like everyone else and these shouldn’t be slashed or diminished due to them being deaf.

 

I could easily rant about these issues because this a topic close to my heart with having a hearing loss but I won’t rant off about it and I’ll leave it here for you to take into consideration and I’d love to get your views and opinions on this , the programme is next on Monday at 8am and is called the BSL zone: Snapshot.. on film 4 if you are interested in watching x

 

 

Petition

I decided around the time of all of The Sun newspaper article that I was going to set up a petition for a world microtia day because something that at the time that was going on in one of the microtia support groups I’m a member of there was a debate going on where one woman was going on about how it was unfair how the public view ,stare and judge people with microtia which it is completely unfair and I personally hate being judged on my microtia because you know nothing anyone would do about it just a coincidence and one those things that happens  but at the same time she was saying she didn’t want people to know about microtia as she’d said she disagreed with newspaper articles on microtia and stories in the media about microtia and that kind of thing but just expected people to know what Microtia was and why her daugter’s ear was the way it was which is understandable as people who don’t understand can take things out of proportion at times like we all do  however sadly we can’t have it both ways and we have to decide whether we either want the public to know about it or you don’t and my personal honest view /opinion is that  you don’t really get awareness without the media and news articles out there I mean how do we find out what’s going on in the world ? we watch the news right ?  but at the same time things in the media can be taken the wrong way like you made more of a bigger deal of than they are so it’s hard to know what the best thing is believe in me it’s been a hard road trying to decide to actually raise awareness and to write a blog anyway back on topic so yeah it got me thinking well actually in all honesty there isn’t a great deal of awareness out there for microtia so why not step up my game and do something else as well as my blog,you tube and Facebook page to raise awareness of microtia so I decided to set up a petition for a world microtia day thinking well throughout the year you get a lot of world days or big days like red nose day, children in need, jeans for genes day ,autism awareness, those kinds of things so why not have one for Microtia which would really help us with the condition to feel ok about our conditions and a day for us to reflect on all that we have come through with our microtia, gets members of the public aware of the condition , may even help more people out there with the condition who have no idea they even have the condition and get us working at a team but at the same time work with the media to make sure they get their facts right and perhaps choose wisely with what media sources we chose to go to such as finding people who are reliable as not all media is I know I’ve read things that have been taken the wrong way like my previous newspaper article was a lot of it was a load of nonsense and it did make me feel quite bad after publishing the article and reading how many facts were wrong and knowing I couldn’t go back and edit it so it had the correct facts so the article has had to go out there with a lot of errors and false info so yeah it is hard to decide whats right or wrong to do and I don’t think there is a right or wrong  .So I decided to set up a petition so that true facts could be shown and the right image of microtia could be viewed and so everyone could work as a team us with microtia or those who have kids that have microtia or are some how linked with it and then team up with educating the public  and I decided once it got a high enough amount of people signed up to it that I’d then send it off to my MP and try to get it raised in the houses of common with the health minister or who ever it had to go through for it to be an official day that would happen once a year (if I got high enough that was)  please please sign up and get everyone you know to join in with this fantastic cause the link to sign the petition is :

http://www.twitition.com/e8ja2

Bullying Of Another Kind…

Well if you’d thought I’d had enough bullying to last a life time then I’m sorry to say but your wrong although I wish you were right ,sadly there was yet more bullying to come my way and well I suppose at least you could say possibly that these bullies were original :S as this was not in school bullying it was in fact an attack of cyber bullying which means bullying over the internet,text , phone etc basically I suppose you could call it indirect bullying as it’s a form of bullying done without seeing the person

 

It  all started off as a  normal evening after school when I logged into my laptop and signed into MSN and Facebook unknowingly knowing I was about to become a victim to cyber bullying and two of my friends who had never expressed and problem or issue with me before instantly popped straight up on chat on MSN and started talking to me ok fine nothing wrong there but then it began starting to type abuse to me and nasty messages and i tried to ignore it by leaving the chat but every time I did they were popping back up pulling me in for yet another round of  abuse and then after a while of me pulling myself out of the conversations they tried to do it individually so one of them would try to talk to me on my own and try to blame it on the other before saying more nasty things and roping the other one into the conversation obviously I was really upset about what was happening and couldn’t believe or understand how or why it was happening and the only thing I could think was that there accounts must have been hacked or something but sadly not it really was them and I knew in school they never said a word and I knew I had to get proof of what they were really like so the rest of the class would know so I began adding everyone from my class at school into the conversation so that they could witness it for themselves and read the messages I was being sent but even so they still couldn’t and some of them even didn’t believe it and said how it wasn’t them and there accounts must be hacked as they would never do it face to face which I admit no the pair of them would never have the back bone to ever do or say any of that to anyone’s face which was the hardest part to face I mean I’d now got used to being bullied at school but now my private life and my safe place where I could escape the bullies(home) was now being taken over by the bullies and I really didn’t know where else I could turn as usually I’d come home to escape it but now I was at home was I supposed to go to school instead as a role reversal ? well funnily enough this was exactly what dad wanted to do was print all of the conversations from them off and take them into school and give them to my tutor to read even though I actually begged him not to and said how it had nothing to do with the school and they wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything as it had happened out of school (small minor incidents not bullying had happened out of school before and I’d been told had nothing to do with the school as it happened outside of school) but I was actually pleasantly surprised when the school did deal with it and my tutor sat and read over all of the messages I was sent and was horrified by what she had read and so she actually spoke to our class the next day having a go about how she was really disappointed that there were students in the class picking on others in the class and how we had been such a close group and why was it happening and read out some of the comments including mine as I turned round and told one of the girls she was spotty as couldn’t think of any other come back and that’s what mum told me to reply as she was standing watching the messages pour through as well as this my dad actually rung one of the girls parents and had them round to show the messages to on our computer and was going to go round the other girls house but her or her sister faked to be her mum pretending to have been really ashamed of her daughter and how she would be in trouble for it but obviously she didn’t I don’t actually think either of the girls did until it was taken to my tutor to sort out and I was told if it happened again due to the content of the message it could have actually been taken to the police but we didn’t that time but if it happened again to go straight to them with it because things got so bad in those messages and yeah it was basically two against 1 the whole way through so this was an awful experience to now know my home life was being over taken by the bullies was I not safe anywhere now ?