Partnering with local services to fund BSL courses for families

My name is Ann, and I'm mum to Daniel (18) who is profoundly deaf. For the past 11 years, I have been Chair of Waveney Deaf Children’s Society, one of 3 National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS) local groups covering Suffolk. Through both roles, I have built good relationships with many people in our local sensory team.

Recently, there was a review of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) services in England. In response, Jo, our local NDCS engagement officer, arranged regular meetings between herself, representatives from the 3 Suffolk DCS groups (Waveney, Ipswich, and West Suffolk) and service leads from the local sensory team. The meetings gave us the opportunity to share the experiences of local families with the service leads as they were keen to address any issues within the wider SEND services that might affect deaf children.

It has been hugely positive to meet and network with our neighbouring groups and to work with the sensory team. Even more importantly, our meetings have helped develop a tangible benefit for deaf children and their families.

In early 2024, our group was approached by parents struggling to fund British Sign Language (BSL) courses so that they could communicate effectively with their deaf children at home. Knowing the importance of language in the early years, all 3 groups felt that this should be on the agenda at the next meeting.

Although the Sensory Service offers support to families with basic family signing sessions, there is no statutory funding for accredited BSL courses, and no financial support available for parents needing to learn above basic level. Rather than just relay this information, the head of service took a proactive approach and asked Activities Unlimited, our council’s short breaks service, whether there was anything that could be done to address this need.

Although there was no funding available within Activities Unlimited, they were very keen to help us address this need and offered to help the 3 DCS groups generate a bid for charitable funding. The work we have undertaken together since has been a real example of co-productive working at its best.

Over a period of several months, we have pooled our knowledge, experience, and skills as we prepared to bid for funding. As part of this, we needed to gather evidence of need. The 3 local groups were in a key position to get quotes from families about the potential impact of funding, whilst the sensory team was able to provide statistical information on the number of families who could benefit.

The challenging part was where and how to apply for grants. This is where the short breaks team were able to offer valuable support as they had experience writing bids and also had strong links with the local Community Foundation to identify sources of charitable funding.

By working as a team, our partnership of local groups was able to submit applications to several sources of charitable funding, and we recently learnt that one bid has been successful.

Co-productive working has enabled our ambition to support families with the cost of BSL learning to become a reality, something we could never have achieved as individual organisations.

Although it's early days, this initial funding has the potential to have a significant impact for families. Hopefully we can continue to use this approach to secure further funding so this becomes a rolling project to give deaf children in Suffolk the best start through timely access to sign language at home.