Seen and Heard - a strong voice for local people
Download (PDF 1.81 MB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Bedford Borough and Healthwatch Central Bedfordshire held a focus group for members of the deaf community to understand their experiences of health and care services. The focus group took place on 20 November 2021. Ten people took part.
Attendees had accessed health and care services more during the Covid-19 pandemic than they would have before the pandemic.
Focus group participants felt there were massive delays in obtaining a health care appointment and added that it is more difficult to access services at the weekend.
Participants felt very strongly that healthcare service providers should be more proactive in providing better access for the deaf community including keeping up to date, easily accessible and improved records of a patient who is deaf, so each person can be easily identified as being deaf before an appointment/treatment is considered. For many deaf patients their needs were not identified when registering at a GP practice, or if they were, they were not prominently displayed on their records, so were not flagged up when the patient contacted the practice.
When asked about using these services in the future, participants very clearly said that they would only use services, and have more confidence in all services, if they improved, if interpreters were provided, and if deaf awareness for professionals was increased.
They felt that professionals do not understand the concerns and needs of the deaf community and the detrimental effect that it has on them. There is general anxiety in the deaf community about how to access services, who will accompany them to an appointment, whether they will have access to an interpreter, and who will be paying for the interpreter.
The deaf community feel that health and care services have ‘gone back in time’ and with all of the technology currently available to support marginalised people there should not be such difficulty when communicating with health and social care professionals. The participants want to see tools like ‘SignLive’ being used more widely and frequently. However, they confirmed that their overall preferred choice remained ‘face-to-face’ consultation.
The report contains three recommendations about training for professionals, compliance with the Accessible Information Standard and the commissioning of interpretation services.