Roma families and deaf children: Multi-professional understandings
It was our end of project conference on Saturday 3rd November. We had a fantastic day; thank you to all our speakers and delegates.
This post is a very brief summary and will be followed by more extensive dissemination. Please have a look at our conference programme to find out more about our wonderful speakers.
The conference opened with our project report where we shared the findings from our demographic survey, interviews with deaf education services, and case studies of deaf Roma children. This was our first chance to share with a wider audience and it was great to get some feedback on our work.
This was followed by a presentation by Mark Payne about his research with Roma Slovak children in Sheffield and his visits to Slovakia giving us some valuable context about the Slovakian education system.
A real highlight of our day was our panel of experts chaired by Paul Simpson from BATOD. Teachers of the deaf; Anna Likierska from Sheffield, and Sandie Griffiths from Bradford shared their experiences of working with deaf Roma children. Juraj Tancos and Ermina Kesedzic talked about the inclusive model they offer at St Edmund's School. Terezia Rostas from Roma futures spoke about the discrimination faced by Roma people and her own work advocating for deaf Roma children and their families.
This was followed by Ioanna Noula talking about her research with Roma children in a Greek primary school; a really interesting case study of when inclusion works.
Our final speaker was Arthur Ivatts OBE who shared his insights about hearing and inclusion.
The conference closed with a plenary by Ruth Swanwick and Tina Wakefield.
It was great to bring the two sides of our research; deaf education and Roma together in one conference room. We recognise we still have more work to do to build partnerships with Roma communities but feel that the conversations started and the ideas generated are a valuable step for us.
Thank you to everyone who came and contributed for such a simulating day. We are really looking forward to planning the next steps for our research with deaf Roma children and their families.
The conference and the project would not have been possible without our partners. We look forward to further collaboration with them. Thank you also to the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account which funded us.
