Someone we know was sent to prison last year. We have no idea where he is or how we can visit him. It started me thinking and I was reminded of Deafinitely Theatre’s recent play “Double Sentence” which is pretty self explanatory but for those of you not in the know, the play recognises that deaf prisoners have already received a sentence for their crime but then get another one on top (‘concurrent’ if you like) – the lack of appropriate communication which makes for an incredibly lonely and confusing time. We know someone ‘high up in the Prison Service’, shall we say, and he agreed that trained prison visitors are allocated to a prison rather than to allocated prisoners. So if our friend is in a  North of England prison, who visits him from the South of England? I am aware of a previous BDA (British Deaf Association) study into supporting deaf prisoners but couldn’t track this down and that also the RAD (Royal Association for deaf people) is involved in prison visiting.  There doesn’t seem to be any clarity and it would be great to get a simple answer to the question “How can I apply to be a prison visitor to a deaf prisoner?”

We’ve just had another unemployed deaf person pop in to our office to see if we can help them find a job . My initial reaction is to scream. No, not at the person who’s dropped in but at the disorganised Kafka-like world we all find ourselves in.  The RNID Employment Service now only supports Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester – these were the very people who emailed me an extraordinarily rude note two years ago saying it was none of my business how they ran their employment service (I had emailed them to let them know that we kept getting their dissatisfied customers turning up on our doorstep).

However I digress.

I can’t even begin to talk about the hearing oriented Job Centres and Job Clubs.  I still mourn the passing of the fabulous Deaf Job Club run by Mika Brojer (long gone to the great Job Club in the sky) and other great hardworking deaf staff employed by the RAD at Green Lanes, London.  I know DeafPlus in  East London offer a good support service  and other places do as well but it is still very much a lottery. We at Deafworks can’t even produce a handout for those people desperately looking to us to help (we are not a job finding agency) as the support network is so piecemeal and competitive.   Dering is a deaf owned company specialising in employment and is an excellent stopping off point (http://dering.biz) – I can highly recommend them.

However this takes us away from how we all can support deaf unemployed people better.   I worked with unemployed deaf school leavers years ago and am fully aware of the issues around literacy levels, lack of work placements, poor interview skills, few jobs, etc (the same issues that bedevill unemployed hearing people too) so putting all that to one side – how can we help  unemployed deaf people in a more efficient and cohesive way? Answers on a stamp please.

I had an interesting experience today.  An experience all deaf people have and really don’t think about – or we don’t allow ourselves to consider. I was walking to my car and bumped into my local estate agent. We chatted for a minute or two  walking to my car which happened to be parked outside a hairdressers, one (by coincidence) we both use. The hairdresser came outside and said “Hi” to both of us. At that point,  I said “Cheers” and drove away as I knew maintaining a conversation with both of them would just be too difficult and stressful, even though they are both very nice guys and easy to communicate with on a one to one basis. So what happened there? I turned down an opportunity of a fresh and new conversation which might, just might, have taught me something new. So if we all miss opportunities like this that hearing people have ten times a day, surely our expanding knowledge and social skills is going to grow at a slower rate – how can it be otherwise? That does not mean hearing people are wise and wonderful (not at all) and that we are not, but it does mean we might have less spontaneous opportunities to expand and grow our conversational muscles.  How many conversations did you miss today?

Exactly what is Hearing Awareness and how will it help? I posted a question on my Facebook for ideas on what could be included in a hearing awareness workshop. Some interesting comments and great ideas but most of them centred on what deaf people have learnt about their hearing colleagues and friends.  Perhaps we need to ask hearing people (who have some experience of working with, or living with, deaf people) what they would like to see included in a course for deaf people to learn more about hearing people. I am thinking back to previous conversations I’ve had with hearing colleagues and they have tended to say things like “deaf people think we can hear things a mile away – actually we can’t!” (slight exaggeration there but you get the gist), “I can’t talk to you & the person on the phone at the same time”, “I get annoyed when the deaf person expects me to drop everything and focus on them” (we could argue the toss with that one) and so forth. There are some very valid points for hearing people to make and I really would be interested in what these might be (and why). Over to you!