Rosie Cooper – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rosie Cooper on 2016-03-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the number of lipreading and managing hearing loss classes available; and if he will ask Public Health England to investigate the availability of such classes.
Alistair Burt
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills supports lipreading, British Sign Language (BSL) and managing hearing loss provision in England through the Adult Education Budget (AEB). Colleges and training providers have the freedom and flexibility to determine how they use their AEB, working with Local Enterprise Partnerships and local commissioners to determine the appropriate distribution of funding to best meet the needs of their local learners and businesses, this includes both lip reading and BSL qualifications where there is a local need for these.
It is not Public Health England’s role to investigate the availability of lip reading and managing hearing loss classes. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is leading a review of the market for BSL and communication support for people who are deaf, deafblind or have a hearing loss. DWP is currently analysing the feedback received from a consultation on Communications for people who are deaf or have hearing loss: market review which ran from 4 January to 4 March.
