Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the provision of deaf support services (a) to constituents in Wallasey, (b) in Liverpool City Region and (c) in Merseyside.

The Care Quality Commission is responsible for assessing the quality of health and social care support, including for those who are deaf. Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for assessing locally what health services should be commissioned to meet needs; local authorities have duties under the Care Act 2014 for assessing people’s need for social care support.

NHS Wirral CCG recently completed a consultation in relation to Urgent Care Services. This consultation had significant representation from members of the deaf community as well as British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters. They spoke of consistent difficulties in accessing local NHS services, more specifically on provision and quality of BSL interpreters; this was not specific to urgent care services but spanned the range of NHS services in Wirral. A subsequent meeting was held with representatives of the deaf community on 21 December 2018 and the CCG agreed to facilitate an engagement process to include providers in 2019 to understand the issues in more detail and plan actions for providers to take forward over the longer term. A further meeting has been arranged for 18 February 2019. This meeting will be attended by members of the deaf community, BSL interpreters and NHS providers in Wirral.