The Deaf Services Team

The Deaf Services Team is a specialist social work service for Deaf and Deafblind people. To provide better support for our Deafblind customers, the Council’s Rehabilitation Officer with Visually Impaired people now sits with the team.

The team works with Deaf children who communicate through British Sign Language (BSL) or spoken English and Deaf adults whose first or preferred language is BSL. The team works with Deafblind adults and children. Some of the people we work with have additional needs such as mental health, autism, learning difficulties or physical disabilities. We have experience of working with Deaf people who use different sign languages for example Latvian Sign Language. However, we do not work with Makaton users.

We empower Deaf people to be as independent as possible and provide information and advice about accessing services available to the wider community. For people who are more vulnerable, we provide additional support to them and their families to enable them to lead a good quality of life.

We run drop in information and advice sessions in Room 3 at the Council House:

• Mondays 10am to 12pm
• Fridays 1pm to 4pm 

We offer Deaf adults and parents of Deaf children appointments to help with filling in forms for example Personal Independence Payments forms (PIP) or making long phone calls to claim benefits. The appointments are usually on Wednesday mornings but can be at different times if necessary.

The Deaf team are social workers not interpreters. We do not provide interpreting services.