The Importance of Social Workers Assisting the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Who Use the British Sign Language - Research Paper Example

This research is to be conducted in the Hampshire area, more specifically in Southampton and its environs. The study aims to find out the importance of social workers assisting the deaf and hard of hearing, specifically those who use the British Sign Language (BSL) and need to access mental health services. This is because of the discovery that people who are deaf and hard of hearing have in the past faced plentiful negative aspects, some of which they still face to date. Some of these hardships include unfair discrimination, especially in the academic and employment arenas.

These people face rejection even by their own relatives and friends, and they are denied the social, intellectual, and emotional freedom a human being should have. The data will be collected mainly by use of feedback forms which will be answered by the deaf and the staff of the homes and hospitals. The participants will comprise of social workers from various nongovernmental organizations in Hampshire and adjacent areas. Other participants will be deaf and hard of hearing people from various homes and hospitals in the Hampshire area.

The targeted number of social workers will be one hundred and the targeted number of homes and hospitals for the deaf will be twenty-five. The sampling method will be random, as long as the homes and hospitals will strictly be from Hampshire. Ethics are a necessary part of any research, and care will be taken to ensure that all the ethical principles; candor, clarity of intent, uprightness, heed, ingenuousness, secrecy, nonbias, esteem, and acknowledgment of intellectual property will be observed.

A social worker is one whose main line of expertise is that of ensuring that the interests of human beings are boosted and that extra attention is given to those who have needs that are out of the ordinary for instance those who are sick and those who are trivialized (Cree 2003). Some of the belittled people are those who are handicapped in one way or the other. Most of these handicapped people have limited or no access to the appropriate medical services needed, and this is where social workers come in handy (Ladd 2003).

This research paper will mainly focus on those people who are deaf (particularly those who use British sign language) and need to access mental health services (Shah 2008). 1.1 Background There are different levels of perceptiveness and audible range of people’s ears (Royston 2005). Different people have different hearing thresholds, and this means that a sound which is loud to one person may be perceived as moderate to another, and at the same time may be totally impossible to hear to another (Ladd 2003).

Different thresholds of hearing are measured and determined using a behavioral audiogram (Paul 2009). According to the World Health Organization, deafness is defined as “…the complete loss of the ability to hear from one or both ears.” Hearing loss is defined as the decline of hearing capability (Marschark 2007). There are many causes for deafness, one of them being inheritance. Most people who become deaf most likely belong to a family that has a history of deafness (Morgan & Woll 2002).

A child can also be born unable to hear due to impediments that come about during pregnancy or at birth (Scheetz 2009). Conditions affecting the child like the dreaded meningitis can also cause partial or total deafness in a baby (Morgan & Woll 2002). Some drug formulations can cause temporary or permanent and partial or total deafness in both adults and children (Padden & Humphries 2005). Other causes of deafness include too much noise and introduction of pointed objects into the ear, which may punch a hole in the ear drum (Marschark & Hauser 2008).

People who often listen to music through earphones are at a greater risk of getting hearing impairments than those who don’t (Paul 2009). Those who work in industries that involve high and sharp noises also are at a greater risk (Morgan & Woll 2002). Research findings as specified by the World Health Organization point out that “…around half of all deafness and hearing impairments can be prevented” (Morgan & Woll 2002). Presbycusis, which is the term used to define loss of hearing or deafness caused by age, cannot be prevented as such because age can cause the tissues in the hearing organ to lose suppleness and become poor in capturing and relaying waves produced by reverberation (Ladd 2003).

Presbycusis, nonetheless, does not come about out of the blue but as a snowballing effect of the above mentioned causes over time (Royston 2005). 1.2 Problem statement Demographic statistics according to the National Center for Health Statistics and the United States Census Bureau indicate that there are between twenty one million to thirty five million people in the United States of America who are either deaf or hard of hearing (Moores & Miller 2009). This means that there are hundreds of millions of other people who suffer from the same forms of disability (Moores & Miller 2009).

How many of these people receive the appropriate and adequate medical attention is a question yet to be answered, but the demographic statistics indicated above show that there is need for more social workers in this field (Ladd 2003). There are various organizations that have come up and have grown rapidly that represent deaf people. A good example is the Royal Association for Deaf people (RAD), whose belief is that “deaf people should receive the same access and opportunities as hearing people” (Marschark 2007).

This association mainly focuses on giving support to the deaf people whose main sign language is the British Sign Language but it is not purely restricted to them; it also helps those who use other sign languages and those who have other forms of deafness, those who are deaf mute and those who are both deaf and blind (Morgan & Woll 2002). Though there are many similar organizations that work for deaf people, this is not to say that social workers have no place; these organizations need many social workers to accomplish their mission (Morgan & Woll 2002).

Social workers can also work individually and still cause a difference to the deaf people (Gutman 2002). 1.