Talking Sense Volume 45 No 2 Summer 1999
A new study, Deafness and ethnicity*, looks at deaf people from minority communities and the development of services for them. Hilary Todd reviews its findings.
Serious research studies of sensory impairments among minority ethnic groups appear to be thin on the ground, so this study, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is particularly welcome. It sets out to give a national overview of initiatives with deaf people from minority ethnic communities and to consider the debates on ethnicity and service provision.
Hearing loss is commonplace (possibly as many as one in four of us has impaired hearing) and people from minority ethnic communities are no exception. Although new immigrants usually represent the young and fit, they, like the rest of us, may lose their hearing as a result of working in noisy occupations, or because of age-related conditions. Most of us, minorities included, seem to accept hearing loss as part and parcel of getting older. But, unfortunately, there are high levels of congenital deafness in some minority communities. Children from south Asian families, principally Pakistan and Bangladesh, are up to three and a half times more likely to be born deaf than non-Asian children. Much of this book concerns the experiences of people born deaf, and their families.
How to communicate?
Communication with people born deaf is a key issue in this report. Families, fathers in particular, are often unsure how to communicate with a deaf child and may be unaware of services there to help them. As a result, some children can feel very isolated in their own families as no-one has the skills to communicate with them. Other families, where the mother tongue is not English, are faced with difficult choices; do they communicate in their mother tongue or in English, or yet a third option, British Sign Language (BSL)? All of these options have drawbacks and some families have risen to the challenge by becoming trilingual.
Where families do know of and try to use services, language barriers and lack of culturally-sensitive support make for further difficulties. For example, information for parents is rarely available in minority languages; this study found 47 languages spoken in the homes of deaf children. Assessing the hearing of a child who does not use English is often the first hurdle. Language and speech therapy is geared to the needs of English speakers. Once at school, deaf children learning orally may find it difficult to communicate with their non-English-speaking relatives (often their mothers), while those being taught BSL often find their language baffles the entire family. Only a handful of sign language interpreters are from minority communities. To complicate the picture further, there are some refugee communities, for example Bosnians, where another sign language is in use.
Bridging the communication gap
Amidst all these challenges, it is good to see that several helpful initiatives are springing up and the report documents a number of them. These initiatives tend to cluster in areas where there are the highest concentrations of people from minority ethnic communities, such as West Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Midlands and parts of London.
Some local education authorities are trying to bridge the communication gap for deaf children. In some areas, specialist workers from minority communities are assigned to families to give support, for example, going with parents on hospital visits. Other LEAs provide interpreters and information in minority languages. The authors found nine schemes to teach BSL to the families, mainly mothers, of deaf children, while in some areas videos were being used to teach a few basic signs to the wider family. Videos were also being used to raise a community's awareness of deafness among children and to help families come to terms with having a deaf child. A few speech and language therapy departments are employing workers from minority communities to assist in assessments and give support to clients who need it. The authors found no projects specifically for deafblind people (but see the previous article).
The most widespread development, however, is the growth of social and cultural groups for deaf people, organised by the communities themselves. These groups were often serving one community only, be it deaf Pakistani Muslims or hard of hearing Gujaratis, but they are clearly meeting a real need, particularly among young people. Activities in the groups are wide-ranging, including social and cultural activities, information-giving on benefits and services, education and training, and religious awareness.
Who am I? Issues of identity
A major theme running throughout the entire report is that of identity for people born deaf. The authors used interviews with people and workers from minority ethnic communities to probe some often painful issues about personal identity and integration within their own communities.
Parents are concerned that their deaf children know more about the British way of life than they do about their own culture and traditions; 'I send my child to school and he comes back an Englishman,' as one mother put it. For example, one Asian worker explained that many deaf Asian young people have no understanding of their community's marriage customs; 'They don't understand why the wedding is large, about marriage ceremonies … the dowries.' Often the problem is that there is no adequate language available to both parties in which to discuss complex ideas about religion, culture and tradition. This sometimes leads to deaf people being excluded from family and community events. A young Jewish man, for instance, recalls being excluded from ceremonies like Bar Mitzvah.
These gaps in cultural knowledge are not usually addressed in schools, where education is often criticised for being 'Eurocentric'. The authors found only a few deaf schools which had workers to talk to the children about religions other than Christianity.
The authors also found that many deaf children had confused notions about their own ethnic and religious identity. Many children taught in BSL felt themselves to be members of the Deaf community, albeit a largely white group, rather than the community of their birth. As one white social services manager pointed out, 'A lot of people have trouble accepting that Deaf people have their own community and culture, but what happens if you're black or Asian as well… which are you first?'
The authors found that the social and cultural groups, mentioned above, often played a helpful role in addressing these issues of identity. Many of these groups provide information about religious and cultural issues and celebrated festivals like Diwali. Young people in some groups appreciated the chance to meet older deaf people who not only could tell them about their traditions, but who often acted as role models too.
The experience of workers in this field is also covered, and the book concludes with some practical considerations for service providers, both statutory and voluntary, who are grappling with the issues.
One reviewer spoke for many of us when he said that this book 'documents a hitherto unknown world'. It is to be hoped that this study will be followed by others that extend our understanding and help agencies like Sense to reach out to the hidden communities in our midst.
*Deafness and ethnicity; services, policy and politics; by Waqar Ahmad and others. Bristol, The Policy Press in association with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1998.
