DEAFAX monitoring visit report - City of London - Meetings, agendas ...

Organisation:
DEAFAX
City Bridge Trust – Monitoring Visit Report
Grant ref:
10276 (Jenny Field)
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Programme area:
06. Positive Transitions to
Independent Living\c)
Managing independent
living & personal budgets
Amount, date and purpose of grant:
02/12/2010: £80,000 over two years (2 x £40,000) towards a programme of training
in sexual health for Deaf young people in London, on condition that a business plan
for the next three years is provided.
Visiting Grants Officer:
Tim Wilson
Date of meeting:
25 July 2011
Met with:
Dr Kirsty Crombie-Smith (Operations Director); Graham Hocking (Training Manager);
Ovais Khan (Graphic Design Consultant); Rubbena Aurangzeb-Tariq (Resources
Developer / Lead Trainer)
1. Introduction to the organisation:
Deafax was established in 1985 by a qualified teacher of the deaf. The organisation’s
initial focus was on the use of technology to support deaf children with learning, but
now extends its services to adults. Deafax works to empower deaf people, building
their self-confidence and tackling feelings of isolation and inadequacy. One of the
organisation’s specialities is the creation of visual, deaf-friendly resources that can be
used in a workshop or training course. The Deafax team includes specialists who
develop and deliver this content. Many of the team are deaf, and act as positive role
models to their trainees.
2. The project funded:
Deafax approached City Bridge Trust for funding towards a sexual health training
programme for deaf young people in London.
Called Comfortable in your own skin? the project aims to work with 80 deaf young
people each year, with Deafax complementing this work by providing training for
parents, teachers and health professionals.
The project objectives are to:
1. Develop two deaf friendly training packages covering topics of puberty and
sexual health
2. Deliver visual deaf friendly puberty and sexual health workshops to 160 deaf
people aged 11-35
3. Develop and deliver training courses to 80 parents and teachers helping them to
support their deaf child during this difficult transition time
4. Deliver specialist deaf awareness training to frontline service provider staff at
five London Primary Care Trusts
This monitoring visit took place midway through the first year of the grant, and the
organisation had not yet returned a monitoring report to the Trust.

3. Work delivered to date:
Deafax has developed two training modules so far, on puberty and on sexual health,
designing materials from scratch and preparing them for pilot. The puberty workshop
has been piloted in Bow and, based on feedback from the trainer, was being revised
at the Deafax office at time of the monitoring visit. The materials were shown to the
visiting officer during the monitoring meeting and were of very high quality.
It is worth noting some of the logistical difficulties of delivering the training modules.
Having been taught in specialist schools for the deaf until relatively recently, deaf
children are now integrated into mainstream schools. Whilst this has been an
extremely important aspect of raising educational attainment levels, it does mean
there will be relatively few deaf children in each school and this presents challenges
when organising training for a group of young people of equivalent age. Although
Deafax is able to organise groups using its database of all English schools, and its
network of deaf youth clubs and deaf faith groups, trainers have to deliver content to
quite a broad age range. This has been factored into the course materials and group
work exercises.
The charity is making reasonable progress with its complementary training for adults.
It has made contact with a deaf parenting group and has booked training courses for
late 2011 and early 2012. It has developed materials for use with the Primary Care
Trusts and has delivered training to one of the targeted five. The charity has found it
difficult to engage the PCTs as many are waiting to learn there own futures before
booking training.
4. Difference made:
Given that the project is still within the first year of operations, Deafax has
concentrated on the development and piloting of training materials. Those materials
shown during the visit were of high quality, and the pilots have been used as
opportunities for learning and development with trainers returning details of
adjustments made. The organisation reported that trainers had been surprised how
much sexual health awareness work was needed with young adults in the deaf
community, and Deafax has also had to grapple with preparing materials that are
suitable for a very diverse audience from different faith backgrounds and with
differing language skills. The training uses a software package that helps test trainees
understanding of the course materials, and this data can be captured, hopefully for
use in future Trust monitoring returns.
5. Concluding comments:
Deafax is a small, expert organisation, with a strong history of preparing educational
materials. During the visit it demonstrated that it was developing high-quality
workshop materials that would help achieve the intended training outcomes. Although
only one pilot had taken place at time of the monitoring visit, it was evident that the
organisation was using lessons learned to update and improve the course materials.
Organisational income is, unfortunately, declining as the Operations Manager Director
noted that “deafness is low on the compassion scale” and people assume that the
issue can be resolved through fitting a hearing aid. Given the quality of Deafax’s work,
it would be a great pity if its impact was diluted by the challenging funding climate.
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