Bristol's Elmfield School for the deaf will remain open

A Bristol school for children with hearing problems, which faced a threat of closure, is to continue operating report the BBC (09/03/12).

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Bristol City Council has announced that Elmfield School for the Deaf will continue to provide education for deaf or hearing impaired children

In 2010 the authority proposed to close the school after recommendations were made by an independent review.

A petition was then started against the plans and within two months had gained more than 4,000 signatures.

The school's chair of governors the Reverend Canon Gill Behenna said: "We have constantly maintained that Elmfield School provides excellent educational opportunities for deaf and hearing impaired children.

"We now look forward to working with Bristol City Council and colleagues in the field of deaf education, on developing the school as a regional provision."

'Financially viable'

The council said the key to its future operation was a revision to planned pupil places and a commitment to serve children with additional needs.

From September, the school will be funded to have an admission number of 30 places.

It currently has 24 children on roll aged between three and 15, many of whom live outside Bristol

Councillor Clare Campion-Smith, from the Liberal Democrat-led authority, said: "In order for Elmfield School to continue, it is important that it is financially viable and can serve children who may have additional learning or behaviour needs.

"We will continue to keep all services under review and respond to how parents make choices for their children's education."

NZ first Deaf MP welcomes decision to fund notetaker

Deaf MP Mojo Mathers is welcoming a decision to provide her with fully funded support in the House as a "significant step forward for the disability community in New Zealand" reports TVNZ (09/03/12). 

Speaker Lockwood Smith this morning announced he had directed Parliamentary Services, which funds support for all MPs to do their jobs, to provide the legal authority to fund electronic note-takers for Mathers.

"This support will be in addition to that to which she is already entitled, to ensure she may fulfil her role as a member of Parliament," Smith said.
 
"The cost of these services will be met from the Parliamentary Service's baseline and is additional to the funding provided to support all members."

The decision appears to be a victory for Mathers, who had previously claimed that Smith had asked her to find funding for note-takers out of her Green Party's existing allowances.

"This decision means that aspiring MPs with a disability or hearing impairment will be able to run for parliament confident that they will get the support they need," Mathers said.

"It means that parties don't have to put people with disabilities low on their list or on unelectable positions for fear that they will have to cover the full cost of their participation."
 
The Greens obtained a legal opinion from Chapman Tripp which suggested the additional funding could be legally provided by a new allocation from Parliamentary Services, rather than taken out of existing allowances for individual members.

The advice was taken to a meeting of the Parliamentary Service Commission, which met on Wednesday night.

Smith said the commission had proposed a mechanism whereby the Speaker would have "the flexibility" to fund "the needs of any disabled or impaired members" out of the allocation he had to support all MPs.

"I am disappointed that we have not been able to find a solution that gave me that flexibility," he said.

After finding no resolution on Wednesday night, Smith had decided to find a way for Parliamentary Services to legally provide funding.

Smith said his office had been funding support for Mathers in the interim, but that could not continue. The new funding from Parliamentary Services would provide the permanent solution.

Separately, Smith said he wanted to develop a captioning service to make proceedings of the House more accessible to the hearing-impaired.

"I intend working with the Office of the Clerk to develop this service and will raise this with the Standing Orders Committee which deals with such matters," he said.

Referee bans footballer from pitch for wearing hearing aids

Deaf footballer Craig Beech has played more than 120 matches over six seasons without any problems writes Tara Brady for Daily Mail (05/03/12).

But during his latest match, the keen sportsman was ordered off the pitch by a health and safety mad referee who claimed his hearing aids were 'dangerous'.

Mr Beech, 23, a retail worker of Dinnington, South Yorkshire, has worn the devices since the age of four.  He said: 'Everyone on the pitch was shocked.

'My teammates were pretty angry and upset. I didn't want to do anything to make it worse but they argued my point and even the other team said they were okay with it.'

Mr Beech's local pub team, Masons Arms, in Wickersley, South Yorkshire, were losing 1-0 to rivals The Pewter Pot when the match was halted midway through the first half.

Referee Gary Mellor spotted the hearing aids when Mr Beech was having treatment for a knock.

Early in the second half he told Masons that the game could not continue while he was still wearing the aids.
Mr Beech offered to cover the devices with a waterproof band he uses when it rains but five minutes later the game was stopped. His loyal teammates refused to carry on without him.

Mr Beech said: 'No-one would get hurt but without the aids I can't hear the whistle or other people and that would be more dangerous to other players.

'If the ref blows and I don't hear it, I might carry on and go in for a tackle someone is not expecting. Players even wear electronic tags on the pitch now and they are also more dangerous because they are really hard. And one of the opposition was wearing a tag.'

Lol Clarke, who has been the secretary of Masons for 20 years, said: 'I've never seen anything like it. These days I've seen players with electronic tags and they just cover them up and it's accepted.

'It was sad to end on a sour note. It was a close game between two sides near the top of the table, great weather and not a bad word from anyone.

'But our lads said they weren't carrying on if Craig couldn't. They wanted to get the game over and then let the officials look at it. Craig's a quiet lad, gets on with things and his hearing has never been an issue. He's really grown in stature since he's been on the team.'

Thomas Lyons development officer for the Deaf Football Project and the National Deaf Children's Society hit out at the decision.

He said : 'All football clubs, coaches, referees and officials should take responsibility for supporting deaf players and addressing their needs. Involving deaf young people in football is great for their confidence, social skills and team work, and they should have the same opportunities to access the beautiful game as other young people. Our Deaf Friendly FC project breaks down barriers. We urge clubs, leagues and other professional bodies to take simple steps to open up the sport to deaf players.'
League Secretary Lee Beckett said: 'We have an all-inclusive policy to allow anyone to play as long as it is safe for all participants. As an onfield incident the FA will make a decision and we will follow their lead.'

A spokeswoman for the Sheffield and Hallamshire FA said a report had been received about the abandoned match.

She added: 'The report will be considered and charges for breach of FA rules will be preferred as appropriate and necessary. We will then await a response from the club which will include an explanation of events and any mitigation before the disciplinary committee come to a decision on the incident.'

Rotherham Referees' Association said it may comment after hearing from the league and FA.

Rare reprieve for Haiti's disabled slated to end

When doctors amputated her right arm that was crushed by jagged rubble during Haiti's 2010 earthquake, Marjorie Benoit joined the ranks of Haiti's outcasts: the blind, the deaf and those missing limbs writes Trenton Daniels for Associated Press (05/03/12).

But then something unexpected happened for the 33-year-old mother of four as she faced personal and economic devastation. She found a welcoming home.

While the 1.3 million people displaced by the quake ended up in post-apocalyptic-like tent cities, a sliver of the homeless disabled population, including Benoit, landed in the closest thing to a model community. They moved into neat plywood shelters along tidy gravel lanes in a settlement designed to house them. They formed a close-knit colony of sorts with ramps for their wheelchairs made out of discarded pool furniture and solar-powered lights to help the deaf communicate with sign language.

The rare respite for the estimated 500-plus people living here, however, will soon end as the government moves to reclaim the land, and, like Haiti's piecemeal reconstruction effort, there isn't much of a plan to house them once they leave — maybe some money for rent and a little extra cash. An alternative site for some of the settlement's deaf residents is not yet completed.

"I have strength by living with other people who are handicapped," said Benoit, who said she's still learning how to use her left hand so she can resume work as a street merchant. "I want everyone to move together wherever we go."

Life has never been easy for the disabled in one of the world's poorest countries. The blind and deaf and amputated have long shouldered a social stigma, their disabilities dismissed as the product of a hex, and few have access to physical therapy or social services. It's no accident that Haiti's disabled make up the poorest part of its population.

Inside the settlement's enclosing chain-linked fence, the residents say they no longer endure the long stares for losing their vision, hearing or a limb.

Claudius Joseph, a blind 25-year-old student, says his teachers believe he can't learn because he can't see. Children, he says, are afraid to touch him.
"I feel normal here because there are other people who are handicapped just like me," Joseph said one evening as his cane tapped the gravel in front of him.

The camp, near Port-au-Prince's international airport, is called "La Piste" because of an abandoned military airstrip across the street. It was set up by the International Federation for the Red Cross, which built 368 shelters for the hearing and speech impaired and others with disabilities. The first families moved in Jan. 7, 2011, days before the anniversary of the earthquake, and each received $150 to help settle in.

Its current residents are a mix of people disabled by traumas or infections caused by the quake and those whose conditions preceded it.

The Red Cross says it signed an agreement with the previous administration of President Rene Preval to use the land until January 2013. Officials with President Michel Martelly's government say they want the land back and the residents need to leave.

"The land is not theirs and the owner wants it back," said Gerald Oriol Jr., Secretary of State for the Integration of Persons with Disabilities. He declined to say who owned the land and referred questions to a foreign charity worker helping the deaf residents. "Within six to nine months they should move out."

When two Associated Press journalists spoke to roughly a dozen La Piste residents about what they would do if they were forced to leave the settlement, some had not heard the news and a few began to shriek.Alix Baptiste, a slender 37-year-old mute man, pulled the lone sign interpreter by the arm and approached the reporters.
He had the interpreter say: "We'll protest because we have no place else to go."

Two U.S. religious groups are building a new site about 18 miles (30 kilometers) northwest Port-au-Prince to house some of La Piste's residents, but a good portion will be left behind and many don't want to leave the camp.
Mission of Hope of Fort Myers, Florida, and 410 Bridge, Inc., of Alpharetta, Georgia, are building 500 houses over the next two years in the town of Leveque. A hundred and sixty of those homes are reserved for deaf families in La Piste, said Austin Holmes of Mission of Hope Haiti. Fifty families have already moved in.
But the fate of those left behind remains uncertain.
"That is the big question mark," said Kyle Reschke, Haiti's project director for 410 Bridge. "We're trying our best to take away that question mark."
And even for those at La Piste who have housing promised them, many ask where will they go if they are evicted in the coming months before their new homes are completed?
Some at La Piste, like 58-year-old Fecilia Joseph, will "go with the wind" if it takes them to Leveque.

But others don't want to leave. That's because they sew clothes in a factory down the street or take classes in downtown Port-au-Prince. Their social networks are in Haiti's capital.
Red Cross shelter coordinator James Bellamy said that if the government seizes the land before January the residents would be eligible for a rental subsidy for $500 for one year and another $500 to help out. They can also enroll in courses to learn skills in carpentry, sewing and masonry.

"We'll be talking to the government and households down there to see if we can advocate for any long-term solutions," Bellamy said. "There's no plan for them to go anywhere."
The Martelly administration and foreign aid groups have cleared out several camps in recent months and moved the residents into homes by paying their rent for a year. But that's only 5 percent of the half million people stuck in the gloomy, flood-prone camps.
On a recent afternoon at La Piste, quake amputees on crutches kicked around a soccer ball on a dusty field.

Residents say they're grateful for the site despite fears that it will close.
"Thank God we live well; we're not fighting," said Mason Egene, a 63-year-old who's paralyzed in the right leg. "We have all kinds of problems but we don't get wet in the rain."

Tale of father-daughter love that survives tough times

The young girl clings to her deaf mother's hip in a crowded bowling alley, watching as a deaf man with hooks for hands talks using sign language, scraping the curved metal claws together as if demonstrating cooking knives writes Elaine Lies for Reuters (05/03/12).

The image opens "Burn Down the Ground," a memoir by debut U.S. author Kambri Crews about growing up as the hearing child of two deaf parents, a life that she credits with giving her both an aptitude and love of storytelling that have helped make her the successful comedian she is today.

"The Deaf community is very much a story-telling community. It's hard to translate into print how a deaf person telling a story is, but it's watching poetry in motion. Because you're fully engaged," she said in a telephone interview.

"When my husband first started dating me, he thought 'she can't be this into me,' but it's because I'm from a Deaf community where you maintain eye contact and you turn your body into the storytelling. There's a lot of hugging and touching and pushing and pulling, it's a very physical community."

For Kambri, now 40, it was a nurturing community as well, with the sign language that she almost considers her native tongue helping her learn to express herself at an unusually early age, while helping her parents cope with the hearing world taught her independence and self-reliance.

But her family was at times so short on funds that they were once forced to live in a shed on their rural Texas property, and her charismatic father was prone to rages that prompted him to attack her mother when Kambri was a teen and eventually landed him in prison for 20 years after he stabbed his girlfriend.

Much of the book is an exploration of Kambri's complicated relationship with him, how the adoration of her early years was transformed to anger and fear, and finally a saddened, but accepting, love.

His charm is on display early on, where he grins and holds court amid deaf friends, telling an obscene joke in sign language before introducing Kambri proudly to the group and giving her five dollars for a treat.

But the isolation of his deafness in an era where he was simply dropped off at a school for the deaf without explanation by his hearing family, and the texting and email of today didn't exist, led to frustration that fed rages and violence.

"The confusion, the feeling of abandonment. The longing to be like the rest of his family, that definitely created some issues," Crews said.

"But if he had been born in this decade, besides text messaging -- oh my goodness, the technology... The technology that exists today would serve him very well."

After a terrifying attempt on her mother's life, the teenage Kambri distances herself from her father and, through a brief, early marriage and job with a lawyer, eventually builds a life as owner of a production company and a comedian, developing a life-long love of theater and performance.

But gradually, through the correspondence forced on them by his deafness, the two rebuild a relationship eventually even strong enough to survive his imprisonment, which goes on today.

"I'd get these letters from my dad, and I realized that we're extraordinarily alike. We're both storytellers, we like being the center of attention, on stage," she said. "It made me understand him a lot more."

Asked if she now feels she lost anything by growing up with deaf parents, she says she didn't -- at least, not directly.

"I would love for my dad to be able to hear music," she said. "I wish he could hear me talk and tell stories and see how much like him I am in some ways. And be able to share music with him, because he's such an avid Elvis Presley fan, and he's never heard a single note."

"Tribes" opens Off-Broadway

Nina Raine's strong drama about being a deaf outsider in a hearing family opens writes Joe Dziemianowicz for New York Daily News (05/03/12)

Toward the end of “Tribes,” Sylvia, a young woman who works for a charity, admits: “I love being ironic.”

So does Nina Raine, the London author of this spirited and provocative drama about a British family of big thinkers and bigger talkers obsessed with self-expression who’ve made it hard for one member to communicate.

Ironic, no? So it goes for twentysomething Billy (Russell Harvard), who was born deaf and lip-reads as his noisy clan clucks about their work. His mom and dad, Beth and Christopher (Mare Winningham and Jeff Perry), are authors, brother Daniel (Will Brill) is wrestling with his thesis about language, and sister Ruth (Gayle Rankin) is an aspiring opera singer. Billy has never had a job.

Then he meets Sylvia (Susan Pourfar), who’s slowly losing her hearing. He finds love and employment and learns sign language, something dismissed — almost unbelievably — by his bohemian family as conventional. Signing scenes are woven throughout the play with the use of supertitles.

In short order, Billy delivers an ultimatum to a family that has been deaf to his needs.
“Tribes” covers many themes, from the wonders and failings of families to notions of identity to the hierarchy within the deaf world. Frankly, there are so many explicit allusions to language that “Tribes” comes off too packaged for its own good.

But ample compensations are Raine’s smarts and wit. The intimacy of the story plays to the strengths of director David Cromer, whose sterling take on “Our Town” ran a couple years ago in the same venue.

Cromer’s staging clicks, as does the entire cast. Winningham oozes empathy, and Pourfar is especially lovely conveying Sylvia’s fear and anger about losing a part of herself.
In the key role of Billy, Harvard, who was born deaf, creates a moving portrait of a man torn between worlds. Words can't do justice to his portrayal, and there is nothing ironic in that statement.

Venue: Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St NEW YORK. Price: $75 Phone: (212) 868-4444