March 2011 Deafworks e-newsletter

Deaf Awareness week: 2-8 May 2011
What will you do to celebrate Deaf Awareness week this coming May? Will you ask your manager to authorise some Deaf Awareness training? Deafworks will go anywhere in the UK and we specialise in high-level, tailored training. Or perhaps you could brush up on your signing - whatever level you are at – whether through our book and DVD or a course, or one-to-one session at BSLWorks.

Or simply follow our five top tips:
1. Face the person you are talking to
2. Say what you want to say clearly
3. Rephrase it if you get a ‘pardon?’
4. Think of alternative ways – such as writing it down
5. Book a sign language interpreter or lipspeaker for your next meeting
We will be covering the theme of Deaf Awareness in the run up to May, so let us know if there is a particular area of difficulty for you and we will do our best to come up with some solutions in our future e-news! 

Calling all Legal Eagles!
With twenty years experience of writing detailed reports and serving as expert witnesses, the Deafworks partners are perfectly placed to work on deaf-related legal cases. We are often asked for examples of our past cases, so we have drawn up a range of brief summaries to give a flavour of the kind of cases we have worked on. We tend to advise the solicitors, rather than deaf individuals (unless you are very clear about what service you want, but we can’t offer legal advice as such). So if you are a solicitor or know any solicitors struggling with a deaf-related issue, whether it is education, employment, medical or care, have a look at our webpage and we will see what we can do to help!
 

MBE in the news
A fine day out was had by all at Buckingham Palace when Laraine received her MBE for services to Deaf and Hearing Impaired people from HRH the Prince of Wales. Have a look here for the BBC2′s See Hear interview with Laraine Callow. 

Hackney Today have also published a feature on Laraine, read here: pp. 1, pp. 2.

The Hub (a new magazine programme commissioned by BSLBT) also came to Buckingham Palace on the day of the investiture and their programme will be broadcast on Monday 4th April 7.30am on Film4. It will be available on the day at http://www.bslbt.co.uk/programmes/the-hub/

See you next month!