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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”

Dr Claire Houghton (University of Edinburgh) Watch on SPTV

I just want to talk a little bit about what deaf women have told us about being mothers. They were particularly worried about the unique impact of domestic abuse on their children, which we felt was a hidden finding, and that was true of deaf children and children of deaf adults. Our research uncovered a heartbreaking dynamic in deaf households where hearing children of deaf mothers often hear the abuse coming but their mothers might not hear doors slamming, glasses smashing or threats being shouted. They live in auditory world of trauma that their mother cannot access.Conversely, deaf children are hypersensitive to visual threats and body language. We heard that mainstream support workers did not have the training to communicate with the mothers or the children, or to understand specific sensory triggers. Furthermore, perpetrators of domestic abuse unfortunately use unique tactics to exploit that and to exploit their command of English if they are a hearing perpetrator, which means that deaf women feel invisible at key moments in their children’s lives because of barriers to communication and bias.Deaf women particularly fear the statutory response. We know that hearing victims/survivors also fear that response, but it was felt most acutely by deaf mothers, partly because of the fear of bias around whether they are seen as being good enough mothers already because of the stigma around being deaf. There is a history of abuse of the deaf community by statutory agencies in Scotland, and there is also the fear of child removal, which happened to one of the mothers and to others that we heard about from the workers.We heard about deaf women and how strong they are, but we felt that the system is stripping away the agency by failing to provide communication support. That is acutely felt in relation to one of our main findings, which was that the child was being used as an interpreter or a child language broker. We feel that it is fundamentally unacceptable, as did the women involved, that hearing children are still being asked to interpret for their mothers. We heard that with regards to every agency, but particularly in terms of police call-outs, welfare checks or court welfare proceedings. People were coming to the home and speaking to the child and not the mother, as we heard when the mothers met the Deputy First Minister. One mother talked about how she was in the kitchen while the child was speaking to the social worker in the living room. Women feel that they are not able to protect, support or care for their child. Furthermore, they are not even informed about what is going on, so the child is missing that support.It also forces the child to vocalise the abuse that they are witnessing and experiencing in the family. It can reverse the parenting role. These women are very strong parents but it adds immense emotional strain on both mother and child. Mothers felt that they could not be a strong protector if they had to rely on a traumatised child to speak for them. Therefore, one of the recommendations, which we can talk to you about, is that we need a guarantee that professional interpreters must be standard for those families and the child should never be the voice of the family’s crisis and trauma.Lastly, in terms of mothers and children, we heard—and this resonates with your excellent work on the 2015 act—about the importance of BSL from an early age not only for deaf children but for CODAs. As a hearing person, I was not aware of the fact that some mothers and children could not actually communicate. Communicating about domestic abuse is really difficult anyway, as I know, having worked with children for 30 years. It is already really difficult for mothers and children to communicate about domestic abuse. Now imagine if a child is not eloquent in BSL.We found that, where there is a shared language, it really strengthens mother-child bonds and centres a sense of safety and connection, so we need to improve in that area. There is a lack of deaf-specific resources in programmes on communicating with children. We have some really good pilots in Scotland for hearing mothers and children, as well as group work programmes and one-to-ones. We need to be able to supply that to deaf families and help them to improve their communication. I will hand over to Lucy to finish for us.

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

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