Hearing difficulties & loneliness

A staggering nine million people in this country are believed to have hearing difficulties.

It is thought that 4 million use hearing aids and another 4 million probably ought to do so – at least 50,000 are profoundly deaf and 23,000 blind-deaf.

For many older people their increasing years comes with some form of hearing difficulty which, as we know, can lead on to problems caused by social isolation and loneliness.

Yet with modern technology there are now many ways to both improve hearing and to communicate – amongst them the BT Text Relay Service, previously known as Type Talk.

This amazing service, which automatically applies a discount to your calls using the service is in operation throughout the year and can be accessed by textphone users and those with conventional telephones by entering either 18001 or 18002 prior to calling the person you want to communicate with.

The Relay handles around 40,000 calls a week in complete confidence and 2 million calls a year…no records are kept and operators are shielded from their colleagues and have to hand over anything they could communicate with prior to starting work.

Until this week I was completely unaware that it existed, and neither had I given much thought to how people with hearing difficulties communicate, until attending a talk by Cornwall-based deaf communications consultant Mark Cunliffe.

I’d recommend him to any organisation involved in communication where people do have, or might have, hearing difficulties. He delivers his talk peppered with humour yet at the same time is very thought provoking.

Mark also offers Deaf awareness training, Sign Language training as well as Telecoms training and can review a company's services and see how it can be improved to Deaf and hard of hearing people.
Mark can be contacted by email at   -  mark_lcunliffe@hotmail.com

I’ve take the liberty of cutting and pasting the following about him ….

Mark Cunliffe has been profoundly deaf since the age of 6. He attended the Mary Hare Grammar school for deaf people and was involved in the deaf community in the North West of England before moving to Cornwall. He is an experienced Deaf and Disability Awareness trainer and has fluent Sign Language skills being qualified to stage III BSL.
Mark’s employment background is varied, ranging from working in hotels as a front of House Manager to being employed by the RNID as a Social Worker. For the last 9 years Mark has been an Outreach Coordinator at the National Telephone Relay Service, Typetalk (now known as UK’s Text Relay service) where he was working on a daily basis with deaf, deafened and speech impaired customers, helping them to use their Textphones and the Text Relay (formerly known as Typetalk). Additionally, Mark has delivered awareness training to many organisations in the correct way to deal with calls via the telephone network using both the Text Relay service (Typetalk) and their company Minicoms.

http://www.communicationsaccessconsultants.co.uk/ourteam.php

Southern Cross - thoughts for the future

As the dust settles on the Southern Cross developments and new owners are found for some of the homes the debate begins about whether the 'market forces' model is the right one for so sensitive an area as adult social care...or care for any vulnerable group, come to that.

To bring the system completely under the State would obviously involve enormous costs, yet the alternative problems of a privately run,' for profit' system are there for all to see. That's not to say that the State is capable of running a flexible and localised system of care, whether it wants to or not.

Should care of the vulnerable, irrespective of age, come under the cloak of the State? Should we all pay, as part of our taxes, to receive that service...after all we all get old and many of us will need some form of additional care which families are either unable, or reluctant to provide.

Are not to profit organisations the answer? They might be, but there are arguments which suggest they will only work in certain situations and even then we have to defined what we mean by 'not for profit'.

MPs will be away from the House of Commons for weeks on end over the summer and in the autumn will start looking in earnest at the Dilnot recommendations. An ideal time, perhaps, for reflection of what we as individual think might be the answer.

The link to the following Guardian article may provide some further food for thought -

Southern Cross's incurably flawed business model let down the vulnerable

Southern Cross closure

Southern Cross has this morning, Monday 11 July, suspended share trading on the Stock Exchange.

The company says it will now start the process of an orderly closure of the business and is hoping to make sure that all 31,000 residents in its homes, spread across the country will not be affected.

The properties it holds will be offered back to landlords, many of whom are owed rent and/or have already agreed to a reduction in rental payments; or sold to new buyers.

The company chairman Christopher Fisher says his priority is to maintain the continuity of care for residents but the move will send shock-waves throughout the sector and cause consternation for many directors of adult services at local councils.

Critics will point to the ongoing problems with the company as reasons why care of the nation's older people should not be in the hands of businesses which, by definition, are set up to make profits and often do make mistakes or wrong-guess the way markets run.