GORDON Chapman jokes that the reason for changing the name of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Society for the Deaf is because is takes so long to say or to sign. The new, zippy name for the Society is Deaf Connections, and the snappy phrase says it all: this is the hub of an extensive network operating on behalf of the deaf with the aim of improving the quality life, writes Marian Pallister.
Chapman, chief executive of Deaf Connections, is positive about the future for the deaf, but is saddened by the fact that when he went through the 175-year-old records of the GWSSD, he found that, time and again, the deaf were ahead of the game, only to find the connections cut by hearing people whose attitudes
were (and too often still
are) patronising and based on ignorance.
Deaf Connections has a finger in every pie. There is the residential care home for the elderly in Bearsden; the pilot scheme in South Lanarkshire to provide a video telephone interpreting service at the press of a button; the sign-language services which now help people into higher education; the youth activities which bring young deaf people together in Glasgow from across the central belt (at their own request: they did not want clubs at home with the same faces); and the youth services which offer information about everything from job interviews to drug abuse. There is also a befriending scheme and a
club for the very youngest
deaf children, as well
as an involvement in the
ethnic communities and an advocacy service.
The organisation's centre in Glasgow's Norfolk Street has become a mecca of ideas and best practice for others working in the field around Britain. The ebullient Chapman quite rightly stresses the positive developments of communication, but Sisyphus would seem to have had an easy job perpetually rolling that boulder back up the mountain compared with trying to change attitudes and maintain the change towards the deaf.
Chapman recalls that in a previous job in England, he worked with profoundly deaf youngsters who had behavioural problems. Against the trend, he invited parents to come and learn to sign, and got ''a tremendous outpouring from parents who had been given terrible advice on how to relate to their children''. The oralist tradition still persists in pockets to this day, but in the main it has become accepted that for parents to communicate with their children, they must
speak their children's language, rather than expecting and forcing them to speak the language of the hearing community.
He says: ''Until 1880, there were deaf teachers. Then there was a conference in Milan at which it was said that the only way to teach deaf children was through speech. The talented deaf teachers became redundant, the deaf returned to their isolation, and Chapman
says: ''It has taken 100
years to get back to where
we were.''
There are still foremen who won't have a deaf worker on their line, headlines in the media which refer to ''deaf mutes'', young deaf people gaining degrees and ending up in dead-end jobs because employers can't cope, rather than the fact that they can't. The upper-case ''D'' designates a community of people, as entitled to their culture, their language, and respect in relation to their qualifications as Scots, Pakistanis, or Italians.
Discrimination exists in all sorts of odd areas, however, including a lack of text telephones in police
stations, which means that the deaf can't even get through. Chapman says: ''These are not expensive pieces of equipment, and there are obligations.''
Many people will remember the old site of what was affectionately known as the Deaf Club, whose best-known
advocate was the late Rev Stewart Lochrie. People used to go to the West Regent Street premises three
times a week. Today, life does not have to revolve around such a club, because technology has moved on. Coronation Street and Eastenders have subtitles. Deaf footballers don't have to go into the club to find out whether they are in the team or where the next fixture is, because they can find out on a text phone.
There is still a great loyalty to the new centre, however, because of the sense of community. All the new technology in the world does not match contact with people of the same culture, who understand every nuance of meaning, who think the same. Chapman says: ''Alexander Graham Bell was trying to develop a hearing aid for his deaf wife when he hit upon the telephone. In doing so, he invented something which would hold back the deaf for years and years.''
The deaf are under-employed, don't necessarily get the best help from the Department of Employment, and object to being integrated into ''normal'' housing where
they are not understood.
The GWSSD has been offering sheltered employment and housing projects for as long as 70 years, and as the renamed Deaf Connections is launched, Chapman says: ''There is nothing new, we come full circle. Our raison d'etre was the same in
1822 as it is today, only
today it is a different world and we need to different name to remind people of the need for change. We need a new image to push down a few doors.''
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