I don't know any family with a Deaf member that looks like this - where the parents have made no effort at all to communicate with their child and have absolutely no understanding of different types of communication (despite having been through an assessment process for a cochlear implant) until a beautiful outsider appears and teaches a four/five year old fluent sign language in what appears to be a few weeks. When the child does then make independent communicative efforts, the parents' reaction is to shut down that route of communication completely, and the child then stops communicating again, except with the beautiful outsider. I have never known a child conveniently stop communicating on request in this way either. The parents are apparently going to choose 'speech therapy' which is implied to be about making the child lip read and perhaps also speak. That's not what speech and language therapy is supposed to be about.
The film doesn't say that the beautiful outsider is a 'social worker' although all the publicity material does. I have never known a social worker who works five days a week with one child and spends chunks of that time doing household chores. She looks more like a sign-language qualified nanny, with some skills of a Teacher of the Deaf. I have never known a Teacher of the Deaf work five days a week with one child either.
I have never known a school that makes absolutely no twitch of effort to integrate a child with a known significant communication issue on arrival - not a single move in their direction? - the results of that effort may be up for debate but I have never known the effort to be absolutely nonexistent.
This isn't a documentary, so does any of this matter? Well, since the film ends with some statistics, it seems to be claiming that it has some kind of factual basis. So yes, I do think it matters a bit. On behalf of all the Deaf children, their parents, the health visitors, the doctors, the specialist nannies, the social workers, the Teachers of the Deaf, the specialist hearing impairment speech and language therapists, the teachers, the head teachers and the special educational needs coordinators, I ask whether this was really the best story that could be told about Deaf children in the UK.
The photography is beautiful.
The film doesn't say that the beautiful outsider is a 'social worker' although all the publicity material does. I have never known a social worker who works five days a week with one child and spends chunks of that time doing household chores. She looks more like a sign-language qualified nanny, with some skills of a Teacher of the Deaf. I have never known a Teacher of the Deaf work five days a week with one child either.
I have never known a school that makes absolutely no twitch of effort to integrate a child with a known significant communication issue on arrival - not a single move in their direction? - the results of that effort may be up for debate but I have never known the effort to be absolutely nonexistent.
This isn't a documentary, so does any of this matter? Well, since the film ends with some statistics, it seems to be claiming that it has some kind of factual basis. So yes, I do think it matters a bit. On behalf of all the Deaf children, their parents, the health visitors, the doctors, the specialist nannies, the social workers, the Teachers of the Deaf, the specialist hearing impairment speech and language therapists, the teachers, the head teachers and the special educational needs coordinators, I ask whether this was really the best story that could be told about Deaf children in the UK.
The photography is beautiful.