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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee 03 March 2026 [Draft]

03 Mar 2026 · S6 · Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee

Item of business

“Sign LOUD: Perspectives of Deaf mothers and signing practitioners on domestic abuse, communication issues and the impact on Deaf families”

Professor Napier Watch on SPTV

Just to continue on that thread, the deaf women told us that they were experiencing in effect a double trauma because they have a lack of access to information in BSL and a lack of opportunity to talk in BSL about their experiences of domestic abuse. The key finding of our report, therefore, which was also highlighted in the inquiry report, is that they need more access to information.The delivering equally safe fund is already funding Deaf Links in Dundee to work in collaboration with several branches of Women’s Aid. Lucy Clark has been doing work for them to develop some training and provide a deaf-specific advocacy service, but that has been considered only as a pilot so far. It is a temporary provision that has been extended, but we do not know what the future of that work will be.We want to emphasise that deaf women told us that they felt that they are doubly disadvantaged because it is hard enough for anyone to talk about domestic abuse, but when you are a deaf woman who cannot access specific services and information, and it does not feel as though you have access to support in British Sign Language, it emphasises the need for the kind of deaf-specific services that we are seeing in Dundee and Tayside and that have expertise in BSL and domestic abuse. Generic services often do not understand what deaf women need as BSL users, so we recommend that pilots such as those we have seen in Dundee be scaled up so that we can provide more consistent advice and advocacy for deaf women across Scotland.We also need to improve the opportunities for people working in universal services to upskill and understand how to work with deaf women. If someone is in a rural area, for example, they are less likely to be able to access a deaf-specific service. If they need to access a local service, do the people who are working in that mainstream or universal service understand what the needs of deaf women are or, at least, how to get the support they need to provide support to deaf women?Before handing over to Claire Houghton, I will make a final point about the lack of provision of BSL interpreters. The deaf mothers we interviewed all told us that they feel vulnerable in reporting because they are not sure whether interpreters will be booked and sometimes there are long waits for interpreters. That can heighten the trauma that they are already experiencing. It is hard enough to pluck up the courage to report in the first place, so sitting around and waiting for an interpreter can exacerbate their feelings of vulnerability. They acknowledged that there might be opportunities to use video interpreting in emergency situations, such as when they report the trauma initially, but any on-going support should be given through face-to-face interpreting. People should also have the opportunity to select interpreters that they are familiar with, because they are already feeling vulnerable, and they should be able to think about the gender of the interpreter who is sent to work with them.All this is just a small part of the justice journey that deaf women experience. It is not just about their contact with the police—we know that Police Scotland is doing a lot of work in that space and we have worked collaboratively with Police Scotland on a lot of different projects—but we need to think about how the broader universal domestic abuse services provide on-going support to deaf women after they have come into contact with the police and reported any incidents.I will hand over to Claire.

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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee 03 March 2026 [Draft]

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