Deaf in the Family

Despite our 200 years (and more) of attention to deaf children, we continue to miss one most significant aspect of need. Although we work hard on deaf education to create citizenship, too often this is focused on making the deaf child normal and not on embracing diversity. We create layers of training and service provision: audiologists, speech therapists, teachers of deaf children, social workers and so on, but this only serves to confirm the child as the problem. We measure extent of hearing loss, assess competence of the child in terms of the expectations in education yet ignore the place of the child in the family. Our research work in Bristol over almost 40 years, convinces me that the interaction in the family is the most significant determinant of the child’s adjustment to society.
In this presentation, I will examine family culture, its context, shared and negotiated aspirations and the skills the family needs in order to function optimally. We need to progress from early intervention and the provision of language in sign and speech, to recognition of the diversity of family structures. In examining this, I will draw on research on sign language acquisition, work with families at home before and during the school years, the resource that is the deaf community and on the contrast in discourse between the professionals we have trained and the families whom we seek to support.