Dear Mantra110,

I am so sorry, something had clearly gone very wrong with our communication with your son. I hope we have not caused your son to be distressed about this. I appreciate it may have made him quite cross with us.

It may help us to address these issues if we have details about your son. Could you please contact me on 01563 826222 or email me at Eunice.goodwin@aapct.scot.nhs.uk and we will look into it for you.

Again, may I say how sorry I am that we failed to communicate in the best way for your son. I will most certainly bring this to the attention of the service for their consideration and actions in the meantime. I will also post any updates on this forum.

Best wishes,

Eunice

Dear Mantra110,

Here is some information from Elaine, our Equality and Diversity Manager which I hope will be helpful.

"There is a service in place whereby deaf service users can contact us via a third party. The service is called contactSCOTLAND-bsl. Use this in your web browser, it will take you to the page and there is lots of information, resources and other helpful information.

The service is not to be used as a way of communication at appointments (although this may change in the future) but to allow patients to make contact with services to make or change appointments etc – in the same way a non-deaf person would telephone to make or change appointments. The service is open to public bodies and was also expanded to third sector partners.

The service user requires to have access to a tablet, smartphone, laptop or computer. They also require to register for the service, however, once registered the individual can access the online interpreter straight away. The individual connects to an interpreter at contactSCOTLAND and then explains who they wish to make contact with. The interpreter will then telephone the service provider, in this case the physio dept, and the interpreter can interpret for the individual to make or change the appointment. If using a smartphone, ipad or tablet the individual can download an app so it then makes future access very easy.

With regards to the wording on our current letters perhaps we should consider including the use of this service.

There is wording suggestions on the page (BSL users can contact us via contactSCOTLAND-BSL, the on-line British Sign Language interpreting service. Find out more on the contactSCOTLAND website).

I hope this is helpful and I am happy to work with any teams where we may wish to trial this. Our local BSL service provider is also the company providing the service to the Scottish Government for contactSCOTLAND-bsl so there are also opportunities to do some awareness raising with staff, patients and the public..."

We will pursue this and if there are further developments in any way regarding your post, I will let you know on this forum.

Once again, thank you for raising this with us,

Best wishes,

Eunice