The Law Centres Federation has released a Press Release today about our “Making the law work for young Deaf people” report.
A recently published report by the Royal Association for Deaf people’s (RAD) Deaf Law Centre, commissioned by the Law Centres Federation (LCF) has highlighted the difficulties young Deaf people experience when faced with a legal problem.
“We have been working for several years to enable more young people to access Law Centre services,” said Mandy Wilkins, Manager of the LCF’s Young People’s Programme.
“When RAD Deaf Law Centre became a member of LCF it gave us an opportunity to connect with young Deaf people. It’s been great to have the input of the young Deaf people who helped to produce the report. It not only highlights the problems but also suggests solutions.”
“Young Deaf people are excluded from every day information. Our society is very much audio-based.” said Jeff Brattan-Wilson, Law Centre Manager at RAD.
“The report highlighted that young Deaf people often don’t understand the options open to them. They may also lack an understanding of the context of a legal problem so the advice they are given may not make sense to them. We need to train legal advisers to work with Deaf people so they don’t assume knowledge their clients don’t possess.
“Young Deaf people are used to relying on hearing people, be they parents, teachers, social workers or other specialist hearing professionals. They may assume that the hearing person knows the answers to their problems. But these people are not legally trained and may not be best placed to advise young people about their rights.
“We’ll be providing training to these people – problem noticers – so they will be better able to spot a legal issue and to refer young Deaf people to the right agencies if they need legal advice.
“We will also be revising the leaflets we provide. The young Deaf people told us that although the leaflets are designed for Deaf people, they are not ‘young-people friendly.’ We need to produce more leaflets about legal rights and make sure they are suitable for young Deaf people.”
It is available online at http://www.lawcentres.org.uk/uploads/RAD-DLC_Making_the_Law_Work_for_Young_Deaf_People.pdf
For more information please contact:
Mandy Wilkins, LCF Young People’s Programme Manager tel. 0207 842 0725 email mandy@lawcentres.org.uk
Jeff Brattan-Wilson, RAD Deaf Law Centre Law Centre Manager tel. 01633 215 099 email jeff.brattan-wilson@royaldeaf.org.uk
Pamela Judge, LCF Communications Manager, tel. 01452 301520 email pamela@lawcentres.org.ukNotes to editors:
The Law Centres Federation (LCF) is the national umbrella group which represents over 50 member Law Centres. For more details please see http://www.lawcentres.org.uk/
RAD Deaf Law Centre joined the LCF in September 2010. For more information about RAD Deaf Law Centre please see http://www.royaldeaf.org.uk/Other key findings of the report:
- Welfare Benefits was the area that the majority of young Deaf people needed legal advice on. Funding for this area of work will drastically reduce once the legal aid cuts come into force in April 2013.
- The next largest subject where advice was needed was discrimination.(pp5-9)
- British Sign Language (BSL) is the first language of the majority of Deaf people with English as their second language. This means that many young Deaf people are not confident with writing or reading English. (pp10-15)
- RAD Deaf Law Centre should market its services more widely to young Deaf people and their problem-noticers. (p19) The first step will be to set up an on-line survey to find out what problem-noticers need to know.