SignHealth’s purpose is to remove health barriers for deaf people across the whole of the UK. We listen to the deaf community and we know that we need to do more to engage with you all and deliver equitable services across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
As a charity, all of our funding comes from public donations, grants and contracts. We want to cover every area in the UK but we do not get enough funding in each area to deliver our services.
What SignHealth services are available across the UK?
| Service | England | Wales | Northern Ireland | Scotland |
| Children and young people | Yes | Yes | Some services available | Some services available |
| Deaf Health Roadshow | Yes | Yes | Some services available | Some services available |
| BSL Health Library | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Policy and campaigning | Yes | Not yet | Not yet | Not yet |
| Domestic Abuse support | Yes | Some services available | Not yet | Not yet |
| Social Care | Yes | Not yet | Not yet | Not yet |
| Psychological therapy * | Dependent on funding – our therapy service was focused on England as it was funded by NHS England. This funding has recently changed. This change of funding means that we may be able to support deaf people with therapy across the UK. You can make a referral on our website and we can contact your local NHS* area to request that they fund your support. *If your local NHS will not fund your therapy, there are other routes we can explore. Please do complete a referral or get in touch therapies@signhealth.org.uk. | |||
What can we do to improve this?
We are pleased that we have recently been able to extend some of our services to support nations across the UK. But, we know that there is still a lot more to do to offer an equitable service for every deaf person in the UK.
But we cannot increase our services if we do not have the funding to continue to support them.
To help improve our offering across the UK, we:
- Looking for trustees from across the UK – we are in the process of recruiting new trustees and diversity is a priority. We have representation on our board from Scotland but we need more people from Wales and Northern Ireland. If you are from Wales or Northern Ireland and are interested in joining our board of trustees, please do contact us as we may have open places.
- Diversifying our committees – we recently set up a young people advisory board and we held open places on the board for young people from Wales and Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, we received no applications from these areas for far. We would still welcome applications from these areas. You can find out more here.
- Continue to look for funding opportunities – we keep up to date with available funding opportunities. If you know of any funding opportunities in your area, you can contact us at fundraising@signhealth.org.uk
- Work to diversify our income – currently, only 3% of SignHealth’s income comes from public donations. This means that we rely on available contracts and grants to fund our services. These grants can limit where we work. We want to be able to have the money to meet the needs of our community, so we are growing our fundraising so we have more funding with less restrictions on how and where we can use the money we receive. You can find out more about our fundraising here.
At SignHealth, we appreciate the impact we have achieved so far, but we also take accountability and we agree that there is so much more to be done. We cannot do it alone. We are proud to be part of a deaf community that will not stop until there is equitable access to health services for deaf people across the UK.
If you want to find out more about our work across the UK, or if you have any ideas, concerns or questions, you can contact us at info@signhealth.org.uk
