Communication support for deaf clients in counselling
When a person with profound deafness or hearing loss presents themselves for counselling, a need to support clear hearing/clear understanding becomes evident. Finding the most suitable way to support that need is crucial to success.
Let’s look at the variations:
- Born deaf to deaf parents.
- Born deaf to hearing parents.
- The onset of hearing loss before the acquisition of speech (before eighteen months).
- The onset of hearing loss after acquisition of speech (after eighteen months).
- Reduced hearing through work (known as industrial deafness), illness, misuse of hearing during younger years (e.g. attending concerts, listening to loud music in the car when all windows are closed), accident, age, or some other reason.
Types of communication support for deaf clients
Now let’s say the client is you; you are the individual presenting yourself for counselling.
Sign language
If you fall within the first three categories above, sign language may be your first language. Finding a counsellor who will best suit your needs may prove to be a counsellor who can also sign. That counsellor could be either hearing or deaf.
A point to realise here is that the deaf community is a tightly-knit one. The best way to explain this might be to say that everybody knows everybody. Many deaf people have a social worker and social workers have many deaf clients. Many social workers for the deaf are also deaf themselves.
As a hearing counsellor who signs, I am aware that some deaf clients prefer to go down the route of seeking out a hearing counsellor and, hopefully, one who signs. A hearing counsellor may have some involvement in the deaf world via sign language training but will not be regarded as part of that deaf community and therefore a safer route for confidentiality.
But what if the counsellor working with that deaf person doesn’t sign? An interpreter is then needed.
Using an interpreter
Let me describe the protocol for communication (counselling, job interviews, hospital appointments, etc) when a sign language interpreter needs to be present.
In a triangle formation, the counsellor and interpreter sit next to each other and the deaf person sits opposite. When the counsellor speaks, the client is looking at the interpreter. When the client speaks, they might look at either the counsellor or interpreter but it is the interpreter’s voice that the counsellor hears.
The communication between the deaf client and the interpreter may be wholesome, that is if the client has met the interpreter before and their signs are similar (sign language has regional differences). However, what about the transfer of communication from the hearing counsellor through the interpreter? No doubt the words will be interpreted correctly, but there will be something important which may not be transferred.
As you may know, it is said that only 20% of communication comes from the words themselves and the other 80% comes from facial expressions, gestures, head movement, mouth shapes, eye movement and even eyebrow movement. Simply think of your own face when you are puzzled about something – your eyebrows drop, your eyes may squint and your mouth may close and stretch. If you’re surprised by something, your mouth will be an open ‘O’ shape and your eyes extended.
The dilemma here is that the interpreter is looking at the client and not at the counsellor and so the inference often shown in the counsellor’s facial expression or heard in the counsellor’s voice may not come to the attention of the interpreter and therefore will not be relayed to the deaf client.
In summary, if you are a client whose first, or preferred, language (during a counselling session) is sign language, a fuller experience will be gained if the counsellor can sign. You, the client, are looking at, and responding to, the counsellor and very little of the communication in that 80% of non-verbal presentation will be missed.
Using a lipspeaker
Looking back on the five variations of hearing loss, communication support is needed in the case of hearing loss acquired later in life. A lipspeaker offers an equal service to an interpreter, sitting equally in that triangle formation but with the client being able to relate more to the counsellor than a sign language user.
By aiding words spoken with facial expression and all the body movements used for the sign language user, the lipspeaker speaks the words (without sound) that the counsellor speaks and supports more difficult-to-read words by drawing the first letter of those words. A counsellor who can lipspeak would save the need for the third person in the room, strengthening confidentiality and the counsellor-client rapport.