Campaigning for deaf children at the party conferences

With help from a deaf 17 year old TV star, NDCS has had a busy month lobbying MPs at the UK party political conferences for schools that sound good.

Overall, NDCS met over 25 Ministers or Shadow Ministers at the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative party conferences, and many more key MPs, peers and candidates standing for election. These include:

• The lead on education for each of the three main parties: Ed Balls (Labour), Michael Gove (Conservative) and David Laws (Liberal Democrat), as well as four junior education ministers. 
• The Minister for Disability, Jonathan Shaw, and his Conservative counterpart, Mark Harper.
• The Minister responsible for audiology services, Phil Hope.

Our lobbying work has been focused on ensuring that Ministers and MPs support our Sounds good? campaign for better acoustics in schools.

MPs and candidates standing for election have also been briefed on a wide range of other issues affecting deaf children, including the newborn hearing screening programme, audiology services, the lack of information on how deaf children are doing at school and social care services for deaf children.

At the Labour and Conservative party conferences, NDCS was joined by Louis Kissaun, a 17 year old pupil from Mary Hare school for the deaf, who had a starring role in the Channel 4 programme, Shameless, last year. Louis did a fantastic job in explaining to MPs the personal impact of poor acoustics in his primary school.

Throughout the conferences, Louis and the NDCS campaigns team were providing regular updates on Twitter and the Campaigning for deaf children blog.

More information:

Louis Kissaun has written about his experiences at the Labour party conference. Read more >

NDCS's Sounds good? campaign