"My elderly Mother who is deaf and unable to speak so uses BSL to communicate"

My mother was admitted to Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, Bucks.

Right at the start I had asked members of staff at the hospital for a BSL Interpreter to come and help my Mother communicate and for the staff to be able to communicate to her. I told them that it is my Mothers basic human right as I am not a qualified trained BSL Interpreter. I was told they will try but they told me that they could not get anyone so I had to stay and do all the communicating myself for everything. I found it very difficult as Mother was finding it difficult too, as I am not a fully trained qualified BSL Interpreter, so we were both getting very upset and stressed and anxious.

My mother had broken her left hip bone outside her home and was placed in Ward 1 to be cared for whilst waiting for a total hip replacement.

I am her daughter and I was with her the whole time as nobody was able to communicate with my mum due to her disabilities.

It was at the time of the Covid epidemic so therefore it was solely down to me to communicate everything to my Mother from Doctors to Nurses to Carers  and Cleaners.

Yet again I asked for help with getting a BSL Interpreter on Ward 1 but again was told no that I had to do all the communicating. I told them that I was struggling mentally and so was my Mother. I had been doing all the communicating since the afternoon she was admitted to hospital. I was going in everyday from 10am to 10pm.

When my Mother was transferred to Ward 1 in a room I went into the bathroom inside the room and I saw that the toilet had excrement stains in the bowl and that the bathroom sink was dirty so therefore I told the Nurse who called the Cleaner to clean them. After the Cleaner had been in the bathroom the toilet was still dirty so by that time I was concerned so I called the Nurse again, but you could tell that she was not happy with me complaining as she had to call the cleaner again. This time the Cleaner came with the Cleaning Manager and he was not happy and I could hear the Manager and the cleaner talking about me saying that I am moaning about nothing so I intervened and said that the toilet is dirty and it needs cleaning properly so I walked away to leave them to it and it still had excrement stains at the bottom of the pan. All he had to do was use a brush to clean the bottom of the toilet and the sides so I was quite shocked and disgusted with their cleanliness. The matter was not solved so I left it as I felt very uncomfortable after I had complained twice. As you well know that hygiene is of the utmost importance so I was very shocked and upset about the way the issue was dealt with, well in my opinion it was not dealt with really.

In November my Mother was due to have her total hip replacement and the Doctor that was going to perform the surgery kindly got his secretary to phone and book a BSL Interpreter via Zoom as I explained that my Mother needs to know exactly what was going to happen as I am not a fully qualified trained BSL Interpreter and that is it part of her basic human rights to be informed as well. The video call went well as the Doctor spoke to the BSL Interpreter via Zoom and the Interpreter then signed all the conversation over the video link to my Mother.

The operation went well so I thanked the Doctor.

The following day my Mother was transferred to Ward 2 and from then on it was all downhill and it made me and my Mother mentally ill.

I kept repeatedly asking for a BSL Interpreter to be with my Mother to help communicate to all staff and to help my Mum communicate to the staff as I was not coping with doing all the communicating with everything due to my Mothers disabilities.

Finally a few days later a BSL Interpreter arrived.

But that was only because I kicked up a stink and kept crying and telling them that I could not cope and they could hear me crying and my poor Mother was distressed also and crying as she felt that nobody cared about her disability of not being able to communicate to the hearing world when she needed proper help via a qualified Interpreter. My Mother felt rejected for having her disabilities not taken into consideration. I was exhausted so I found it difficult to communicate to my Mother myself, so my Mother just felt ignored. It was awful for both of us mentally.

It had taken the Hospital 7 days before they gave my Mother proper help with a BSL Interpreter.

Why?  In my opinion that is too long to wait for help communicating. That is awful. My Mother and me were both mentally and emotionally drained.

I was told by the staff that I was needed to be there to communicate for my Mother back and forth. Also I wanted to be there as if I had not been then my Mother would have had nobody to help communicate so I had no choice which I think is disgusting.

My Mother went home beginning of December.

I have since found out that I could have asked for a Hospital Social Worker whilst me and my Mother were there. Why was I not informed of this at the time? Or why didn't a member of staff think to send the Hospital Social Worker to us to help us to speak with?