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Hi! I’m Annika Nation-Reid from Able Radio
and I’m here with the lovely Kate Galloway from RNID.
If you can tell us a little bit about yourself and your organisation please?
RNID has services across the UK.
In Wales, we provide a variety of services such as fund-raising,
we do some political campaigning,
we do the Youth Adult Transition Service.
We work with Deaf adults who are 16-30-year-olds.
They are for people who need to access jobs, going to college, when they’re learning to drive,
that type of thing in that period of their life.
We also have Care Services where we work with over 18’s with additional needs
and work in the community.
We also have an Outreach Service,
we have a residential provision, that’s in England.
We’re newer in Wales so we’re still developing that.
We have Supported Living – that’s in Derwen Road in Carmarthenshire.
We support Deaf people there with their living skills to become independent,
so there’s a lot of support there.
We have a Communication Services Department
where we you can book Interpreters, Note-takers
and any other access to communication.
Are there any treatments available for people who are hard of hearing or Deaf?
Well, it depends again on the person as I was saying earlier.
It depends on what they need.
If a person’s hard of hearing and they became deafened,
they might want a Cochlear implant
and then they would go to a hospital and have an assessment,
and then they could have that opportunity to have a Cochlear implant to help them with their hearing.
Some Deaf people have hearing-aids.
It really depends.
Other Deaf people who are Sign Language users,
they don’t want to be treated or want any support
because they use Sign Language as their mode of communication,
so it depends on the individuals.
How can people find out more about RNID?
You can get information through our RNID website, which is www.rnid.org.uk.
We have an Information Officer here in Cardiff,
with lots of information like the posters you can see behind me and factsheets,
and that gives information about Deafness and people who are hard of hearing
you know, how people can help them cope with their Deafness.
There’s also a society called the National Deaf Children’s Society
and they’re very supportive obviously with children
and the Carers and the parents involved with Deafness.
They go on activities and do lots of work with the families.
We’ve got a BSL clip,
so everything that’s on our website is also translated.
We’ve also got the ability to have large font on the website
so that it’s accessible to people,
and if the format isn’t suitable for you,
you’re able to contact RNID and they would provide something in a suitable format.
What support can your organisation provide to those living with Deafness or who are hard of hearing?
RNID provides a variety of services for Deaf and hard of hearing people.
My example of the services that I work for is Care Services.
We also have Youth Adult Transition Services that are with adults from 16-30.
We also have a Communication Support Service
and that’s where you can book Interpreters for Deaf people or hard of hearing people,
so they will find the appropriate communication support for the Deaf or hard of hearing person,
whether that’s a lip-speaker,
somebody who uses British Sign Language and needs an Interpreter,
so there’s a whole range of aids to communication where
we can put people in those positions where a Deaf person needs to go to a Jobcentre,
a hospital or different types of everyday appointments
where they wouldn’t be able to access the information otherwise.
Can you tell us a little bit about what your life was like as a Deaf person growing up?
When I was small, I mean I had a good education.
I really mixed in well with the children in my area
because we were in a small village,
but then when I went to the senior school,
it was then mainstream education with lots of people I didn’t know.
It involved a lot of bullying because I was Deaf.
It was very difficult for me.
I didn’t feel very confident in that school,
but it was only then after that when I met more Deaf people and learnt Sign Language
that I always felt more included in things later on in my life,
and that’s when my life improved
but it was difficult in school.
What happened was, my mother had German measles and then I was born Deaf,
and I was diagnosed when I was 8 months old
and they didn’t know what to do!
And that time, it was 1978
there wasn’t a lot of professional medical support around the different options available for people,
so I had to go to Cardiff, to a hospital there,
all the way from Pembrokeshire to Cardiff just to get a hearing-aid fitted
because there was nothing in the neck of the woods where I lived
so my mother and father had a lot of support through National Deaf Children’s Society
and my mother was the Secretary and the founder member of the National Children’s Society in Pembrokeshire
because of her own experiences of having me,
and everybody worked together and she met other people who had Deaf children
so there was a lot of support for me and for the family through the National Deaf Children’s Society when I was little.
So I wasn’t brought up with a lot of other Deaf people.
I was brought up with people who weren’t Deaf,
and my friends weren’t Deaf and I learnt how to speak and how to lip-read
and the Doctors and the medical advice at that time
the options were limited and they said:
"it’s best to teach your daughter how to speak, how to lip-read"
and then when I was 16, I started learning how to sign
and now I’ve got the best of both worlds –
I can fit in with the community that I grew up with
but I can also fit in with the Deaf community
because I’m able to use both languages.