UC and reasonable adjustments?

I’m seeing two clients on Monday. They are a Romanian born couple, both of whom are profoundly deaf. As a result neither of them speak nor read English, and communicate only via British or Romanian Sign Language. I believe they can both read Romanian. At present they both job-share a single McDonalds role and are struggling to cover their £600p/m rent. They’re workers with responsibility for a child with disabilities (ASD, profoundly deaf) and so I have no doubt of entitlement.

Due to their conditions they’ve fallen somewhat outside the system and I’ll need to complete a UC claim for them with the assistance of an interpreter.

My concerns are what will happen after the claim is made. I have no doubt that the ID verification and claimant commitment interview will be done with a BSL interpreter, but I struggle to see how they’ll be able to manage a UC claim without the ability to read English.

They do visit a local organisation regularly who have a BSL translator, but does anyone know of any duty and/or support the DWP can give to ensure they can sustain their claim successfully?

Any help is much appreciated.

The DWP is a service provider within the meaning of Part 3 of the Equality Act so has a legal duty to make “reasonable adjustments”  where the system places them at a substantial disadvantage compared to people without disabilities.  This duty is clearly going to be triggered. It is for the DWP to say what adjustments it will make but it could be , for example, the provision of an “auxiliary service” such as arranging suitable face-to-face interpreters.  They will also need to make adjustments to their processes for how they initiate conversations, such as text messaging. 

The point is to inform the DWP of the barriers (preferably with a written record) and then to ask the DWP what they are going to do.  When considering what is reasonable, the DWP must aim to provide them a service that is a close as possible to the service that everyone else receives – which of course may not be that much comfort to them!

For clarification purposes…

The duty to provide reasonable adjustments under EA 10 is anticipatory. The claimants can (and clearly should) specify what reasonable adjustments would put them on a level playing field with other claimants but if the claimants hearing and reading ability is spelt out at the outset then it should be clear to them that such clients will require interpretation and translation for every interaction.

The issues to be addressed will be:

- putting DWP on notice of what is expected.
- understanding the mechanism by which that information is permanently recorded on the claimants accounts (it is likely that it won’t be).

Good luck.