News

News 22nd June
Black Lives Matter:  there are more protests and marches. The organisers want a meeting with Boris to have pressure to change.  So does that include deaf black people?  Interesting because in 1991 (yes 1991)  RAD published a report on the black and Asian deaf (BAME) community.  They interviewed 150 BAME people and had information from 57 Local Authorities.  They found many of the stereotypes that Asian groups had religious beliefs which said hearing loss was punishment, that parents did not turn up for signing classes and that their cultures kept them apart from mainstreams services.  The report had recommendations including: 
* Make organisations aware of BAME needs;
* recruit and train black staff;
* make links with organisations to work with black deafness;
* improve interpreting and communication so that interpreters could work from community spoken languages into BSL.
* support Black cultural projects;
* create a proper database of black and Asian needs.
That was nearly 30 years ago … THIRTY YEARS.  You would be right to say that not much has changed.
Shambles of the smartphone app.  It seems a big waste of money and everyone blaming everyone else.  Government said it would be ready in May and spent about £11 million.
But scientists said it would not work and when it was tried it did not recognise i-phones.  Then Government contacted a Swiss company to develop an app with the Apple-Google design – but Apple said they did not know about this.  Now we have no idea when a contact tracing app will appear.  Government now saying it is not as important anyway.