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PIP Activity 8, and BSL
I have a case at UT that involves someone who is prelingually deaf and communicates using BSL. By definition this is their native language, but it has no written form. As you cannot read in BSL should score points under Activity 8. Would welcome any thoughts/comments. Thanks.
That is a very interesting question! One I am looking to make in forthcoming hearings.
As I understand it BSL was recognised as an official minority language in GB in 2003 but does not have the same legal status (protection & requirement to promote etc) as, for example, Welsh.
Therefore can BSL be described as a ‘native language’? Or is a BSL users native language to be regarded as English (or other spoken langauge as appropriate)? In some caases we have dealt with DWP have awarded points under Activity 8 but clearly on the basis on the claimants limited ability in English (given as you rightly say BSL has no written form (noting that “read” excludes Braille - which like BSL is not a spoken language)).
Are you also seeing issues with Activity 9 where DWP appear to argue for BSL users as a standard response:
“The need for a sign language interpreter for a person with hearing loss is covered by Activity 7 rather than Activity 9. The presence of another person as socuial support must be due to an inability to understand and respond to body language and other social cues and assist in social integration”
So what about the social cues that come from tone of voice for example? Following HB v SSWP (PIP) https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/welfare-rights/caselaw/item/overlap-between-descriptor-7c-communication-support-and-9c-social-support etc. there may well be a strong counter argument to this approach. As ever it will depend on the facts of the individual case.
I have a case at UT that involves someone who is prelingually deaf and communicates using BSL. By definition this is their native language, but it has no written form. As you cannot read in BSL should score points under Activity 8. Would welcome any thoughts/comments. Thanks.
my gut feel is that this is a nice idea, but won’t work.
inter alia, if the language isn’t a written language the descriptor is irrelevant, it can have no application at all. not because the person can’t read, but because the language isn’t a written language capable of being read and so the descriptor has nothing on which to bite.
also, of course, “If the claimant cannot read, this must be as a direct result of their health condition or impairment “, and being deaf is not a health condition that can prevent one learning to read
inter alia, if the language isn’t a written language the descriptor is irrelevant, it can have no application at all. not because the person can’t read, but because the language isn’t a written language capable of being read and so the descriptor has nothing on which to bite.
also, of course, “If the claimant cannot read, this must be as a direct result of their health condition or impairment “, and being deaf is not a health condition that can prevent one learning to read
the Oxford English dictionary includes as a definition of language “any method of expression or communication (the language of mine; sign language)”
In my experience many pre-lingually deaf clients (particularly of older generations) had great difficulty in learning to read & write. This may be partly to do with their experiences in the education system but also the inability to hear the spoken version of the written language makes it much more difficult to understand /comprehend / teach the meaning of, for example, English (particularly without the use of BSL as an alternative means of communicating meaning / context etc.). Thus many deaf people who attended schools with an oral tradition (where the approach was learning to speak / lip read and BSL was banned as an education medium) have, as a result, very limited ability in English and often BSL.
I would welcome comment from the deaf community / those with greater expertise on the issue of BSL as a language / whether deafness as a condition can have a direct impact on the ability to learn to read (English).
I feel that with PIP we may be back to the point we were with DLA before Fairey-Halliday and the numerous Commissioners decisions that followed. We are seeing increasing numbers of pre-lingually deaf DLA claimants we assisted many years ago who now have lower/no award on migration to PIP.
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inter alia, if the language isn’t a written language the descriptor is irrelevant, it can have no application at all. not because the person can’t read, but because the language isn’t a written language capable of being read and so the descriptor has nothing on which to bite.
also, of course, “If the claimant cannot read, this must be as a direct result of their health condition or impairment “, and being deaf is not a health condition that can prevent one learning to readthe Oxford English dictionary includes as a definition of language “any method of expression or communication (the language of mine; sign language)”
In my experience many pre-lingually deaf clients (particularly of older generations) had great difficulty in learning to read & write. This may be partly to do with their experiences in the education system but also the inability to hear the spoken version of the written language makes it much more difficult to understand /comprehend / teach the meaning of, for example, English (particularly without the use of BSL as an alternative means of communicating meaning / context etc.). Thus many deaf people who attended schools with an oral tradition (where the approach was learning to speak / lip read and BSL was banned as an education medium) have, as a result, very limited ability in English and often BSL.
I would welcome comment from the deaf community / those with greater expertise on the issue of BSL as a language / whether deafness as a condition can have a direct impact on the ability to learn to read (English).
I feel that with PIP we may be back to the point we were with DLA before Fairey-Halliday and the numerous Commissioners decisions that followed. We are seeing increasing numbers of pre-lingually deaf DLA claimants we assisted many years ago who now have lower/no award on migration to PIP.
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Ah. thank you. i take most of what i said back then…. but nontheless think it all might struggle and your last paragraph may well be right….
also, of course, “If the claimant cannot read, this must be as a direct result of their health condition or impairment “, and being deaf is not a health condition that can prevent one learning to read
Disagree with this - the difficulties that pre-lingually deaf children have in learning to read are well documented.
In terms of ‘native language’, my argument would be that for the purposes of PIP the ‘native language’ of a person who is only able to communicate using sign language is the language that they would normally speak and read if it was not for their disability.
From that point I’d use CPIP/1769/2016 and argue that the clients illiteracy is a result of being pre-lingually deaf.
It might be worth contacting RAD to see what their opinion is?
I have won 8d in 2 pre-lingually deaf cases without any great difficulty and 8e in another. Getting into native language debates needlessly overcomplicates this. Subs and POs routinely argue that points should be awarded under 9 but not 8. Beyond that DMs and POs have no idea.
BSL involves reading gestures, faces and general body language. It is undoubtedly a language of itself up to a point but a persons native language would ordinarily be English and contains things which pure BSL does not e.g. punctuation as a guidance to meaning and flow and also critical things like tenses and the ability to detail abstract concepts. For example, I have a client currently who tried to articulate that they were out of breath at the top of the stairs. Could only articulate it as “more than one step” when what they wanted to say was “flight of stairs.” To someone with a hearing impairment the words flight and stairs should not be in the same sentence. They make no sense. They may, as with my client, use the phrase from then on but it’s not because they understand it. It’s because they now see that it means something to me.
Putting that aside…
1) Please remember that the activity is “signs, symbols and words.” Very easy to forget in light of the wording of particular activities but it matters. A full stop, a comma, speech marks, capitalisation and colons are all symbols. They are generally meaningless to a deaf person. A shop name could be meaningless. A symbol may not explain it. Ask a PLD person about Microsoft and their logo for example! Had a lovely story from a client about not knowing what the heck Asda was until they went in. Asked their Mum why it didn’t just say food, drink and clothes. Same client had a Nokia phone. Couldn’t get their head around why Apple would be called Apple at all.
Map reading is also interesting. Client has studied Google Maps to navigate a journey then finds themselves in front of a sign for the road they wanted. Which end of the road are they at though?
2) Most PLD clients are less than perfect at BSL and its many aspects.
3) The amount of prompting needed to understand a simple concept is often sufficient to get you through on regs 4 and 7. It’s near certain that reliability of understanding and the ability to do so in a reasonable time should not even be a debate. If they are then ask why HMCTS book such things for double time and then almost always run over!!! Worked for me in 1 case much to the amusement of a judge who was clearly having issues with a GP.
4) Bear in mind there will be points for budgeting and many other things which advisers don’t routinely associate with hearing loss. CPIP/721/2016 is a useful starting point for the idea that a person with a sensory impairment does not require a cognitive deficit in order to score budgeting points. Have already used it with some success.
5) Never thought I’d say this but Claire is wrong re: hearing impairment and reading. It absolutely hinders reading in most respects and is wonderfully documented.
Granted many advisers don’t get this to be fair. Heard someone mutter in my office that they couldn’t understand why the client could respond to text messages but not letters. Hopefully the above will explain that. Paragraphs are often used to expand and explain the abstract. Meaningless to a deaf person.
Mike - put much more eloquently than I could!
Just frustrating that it feels like ‘here we go again’ with disability benefits and deaf awareness.
Around the time of Fairey-Halliday the clerk to our local tribunal was a BSL user (hearing) and heavily involved in with the local Deaf & Hard of Hearing Centre - woe betide any tribunal that was intending to make an ‘inapprpriate’ decision for DLA!
At about the same time colleagues and I visited the DLA Unit at Blackpool, met with some decision makers and discussed DLA and pre-lingual deafness - the attitudes expressed and lack of awareness was astonishing (not).
I will accept verbose and sweary but eloquent is not a term that anyone who knows me would use 😊
Otherwise I wholly agree with you, although I would add that sensory impairment awareness as a whole amongst decision makers, tribunals and indeed WROs is shockingly poor. Routinely hear people with sensory impairments being advised they won’t qualify for PIP when they’d be on for around 8 to 13 points or more for daily living and at least 10 on mobility. Even more now we have a reversion to the DLA approach to safety.
5) Never thought I’d say this but Claire is wrong re: hearing impairment and reading. It absolutely hinders reading in most respects and is wonderfully documented.
well i did take it all back.
i can “see”, thinking about it further, (albeit it’s impossible to remember that far back to when i was learning to read) that being able to hear what people are saying about the written letters in front of you will be relevant to being able to then read them at some point.
i guess i had thought that there would be techniques that would be used to enable deaf people to be able to learn to read - really it should be possible, one would have thought after all this time.
maybe, in this sort of case, an expert resource provided who are experienced in teaching the deaf (or in another context, the blind) to do whatever it is that the rest of us take for granted would be helpful. is there such a resource?
maybe, in this sort of case, an expert resource provided who are experienced in teaching the deaf is there such a resource?
There are teachers and there are techniques but they can rarely teach the abstract and conceptual stuff we contain in a mere paragraph. Provision is, shall we say patchy, so most adults won’t have had access and sensory services are quietly being slashed and burnt across the U.K. so provision for kids will also be patchy and worsening.
Having dealt with QTVIs, the work they do is valuable and hugely undervalued. However, it’s also inevitably generic. You can’t know everything about every aspect of sensory loss. There’s something new to be learnt from every person you meet.
Is it being argued that a claimant who has been unable to learn to read English through lack of hearing can score under Reading? This seems fairly solid to me.
Or is the argument that even if they can read English, sign language being their native language is enough to score? This doesn’t seem so promising.
Is it being argued that a claimant who has been unable to learn to read English through lack of hearing can score under Reading? This seems fairly solid to me.
Or is the argument that even if they can read English, sign language being their native language is enough to score? This doesn’t seem so promising.
potentially both - accepting that the first is easier to make.
Note what Mike says about the issues of learning / understanding English. It is my understanding / experience that BSL is a very literal language and not only has an absence of punctuation, tenses etc, (as in a written langage) but it is difficult to describe abstract & conceptual ideas. Therefore even fluency in BSL will not neccessarily assist in the learning of English (partiularly to a more complex level.
It is my experience that some PLD BSL users have a very distinct way of writing English (that is different to the way a hearing person whose first spokn languag is not English maight write it).
Similarly the issue of abstract / theoratical concepts was frequently an issue with DLA lower rate mobility - “why don’t you go to unfamiliar places on your own, what stops you doing this?” answer “i don’t go”
Your turn to answer better than I could Peter.
One thing to add - “why don’t you go to unfamiliar places on your own? What stops you doing this?”
In my experience responses come down to…
Client - “What is unfamiliar?”
Me - “A place you don’t know”
Client - “How I go there if don’t know?
A lovely example of the lack of abstraction and its replacement with very literal thought.
Similarly, “What stops you doing this?”
Client has no conception of what “this” or “that” is.
Have I missed something? Can people who are profoundly deaf from birth learn to read a phonetic language? I would have thought it possible to read Chinese which is primarily visual or possibly recognise some simple English words but I just can’t imagine how I could learn to read a phonetic language