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A blog from the SignHealth campaigns team:

On 16 January, SignHealth, with host Deepa Shastri, held a webinar to give an update on issues with access to healthcare and what needs to change to improve the health of deaf people.

The Deaf Health Webinar was attended by nearly 200 people. Those attending represented a wide range of interested parties, including NHS professionals and inclusion teams, advocates, deaf organisations and community members from across the country.

“10 years ago, SignHealth published the Sick Of It report, it talked about the poor access to healthcare that deaf people face, including late diagnosis or even misdiagnoses…

This is obviously a health inequality, and really very little has changed since then. We’re still facing the same issues, the same barriers, the same situation. So, enough is enough.”

– Lucy Warnes, Interim Chief Executive at SignHealth

For us, it is important that this campaign reflects the feeling in the community. We are fed up and the campaign highlights the severity of the issues. Deaf people are dying due to poor access to healthcare. We are Still Sick Of It, where’s our access?

“Some of you know that we have been doing a lot of different work in the background with the NHS, really trying to exert our influence and bring the changes that we need to see. But the NHS has faced a lot of different changes. These have resulted in delays and how responsive they can be as an organisation.

It’s time for us to put pressure on the NHS and force them to take things more seriously. No more excuses, no more barriers.”

– Lucy Warnes, Interim Chief Executive at SignHealth

What is next?

Abigail Gorman, Policy and Research Manager, and Robin Ash, Engagement Officer, shared how their work will be taking this campaign forwards.

Abigail will continue to engage with the NHS to implement and update the Accessible Information Standard (AIS). Just last week, she gave a presentation to 140 people working in NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and in the legal sector. Also, we are expecting an announcement from the NHS any day now, and we will let you know more as soon as we can.

As well as raising awareness of the legal requirements and issues within the NHS, we also have plans to engage with our community, who are all too familiar with the barriers. Robin explained we are starting with a roadshow. He will be visiting clubs and community groups across England to deliver workshops covering:

  • understanding our rights as patients, carers and parents
  • collecting your experiences of healthcare
  • the Accessible Information Standard (AIS)
  • how to complain, for example when a BSL interpreter isn’t provided at an appointment
  • and how to organise a Deaf Health Forum in your area.

There has been a lot of interest in this roadshow. We will be sharing a calendar of events in the coming weeks. Over 60 workshops have already been booked in for 2025!

During this webinar, we received lots of good questions, which was fantastic! Unfortunately we ran out of time to get to all of them. We will do our best to answer them where we can.

Thank you to everyone who registered for the Deaf Health Webinar. We hope you will join us in whatever way you can as this campaign develops because we know providing communication access saves lives!

Want to watch the Deaf Health Webinar?

Here we have shared the first half of the Deaf Health Webinar, including a conversation with Lucy Warnes and presentations from Abigail Gorman and Robin Ash. We hope you find it interesting and useful!

What you can do

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    It’s not new, we are Still Sick Of It

    Deaf Health Webinar attended by nearly 200 people highlights plans for ensuring the NHS knows that enough is enough.

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    Barriers in health services lead to inequalities. We are still sick of it! Where is our access?