Accessing health & social care services by the deaf, Bristol and South Gloucestershire.

This is a summary report from Healthwatch Bristol following a workshop conducted with Healthwatch Bristol (HwB) and University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust (UH Bristol) in response to the Healthwatch Bristol report: ‘Accessing health & social care services by the deaf, deafened and hard of hearing communities in Bristol and South Gloucestershire.

Healthwatch Bristol and South Gloucestershire with Bristol City Council organised a consultation event on Wednesday 27 April 2016 for people who are D/deaf, deafened, hard of hearing and deafblind to come together and give feedback about their experiences of health and social care services. People attended and spoke about services in Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset (BANES), Somerset and Wiltshire. Healthwatch liaised with both Bristol City Council and South Gloucestershire Council to promote and deliver the event.

Follow up actions for the Foundation Trust were:

- To reconsider signing up to the Bristol Deaf Health Charter and prioritise which areas of the Charter it worked on.

- To discuss with SWAST how information about a patient’s communication needs are shared between paramedics and hospital staff.

- To respond to learning from the Children’s Hospital with regards to the passport magnet; consider using a similar symbol in adult services to alert staff to a patient’s communication needs.

- To roll out training for staff on supporting patients with additional communication needs

- To develop a ‘toolkit’ for each ward which contains useful information and resources for staff to use to support patients with additional communication needs (for example, repair kit for hearing aids, communication flash cards, sign language prompts, information about how to arrange an interpreter)

- To explore the wider application of a pack being used by the Trust’s Audiology Team at clinics in Southmead Hospital as a tool to help staff support people who are hard of hearing.

- To explore an idea to create BSL videos for UH Bristol website about the services UH Bristol offers (UHBT has created a Welcome Guide http://bit.ly/2hhNsBr

Follow up actions for Healthwatch Bristol were:

- To facilitate an event for members of the public to attend and feedback to UH Bristol about their ideas for improving services and information for people with additional communication needs.

- To create a BSL video detailing what has been done since the event in April and how UH Bristol (NBT and GPs) are implementing the AIS.

- To research how many people in South West require support as part of the AIS.