Cygnet Hospital Bury provides a range of adult and adolescent specialist inpatient services that include Deaf male and female adult inpatient services. As a major employer of Deaf professionals who have British Sign Language (BSL) as their first or preferred language it has been recognised that there was a need to ensure that Deaf members of staff have full and equal access to the CPI MAPA training course and accompanying supporting work book and resources.
As a result a project team was put together at the hospital to work in collaboration with CPI. The team members included Nick Horne, Reducing restrictive Practice Lead North & MAPA Instructor; Clare Shard, Head of Interpreting and Translation team; Trevor Borthwick-Hare, Communication and Translation Specialist; Brett Peers Recovery College/Patient Engagement Lead & MAPA Instructor and Luke Van Os, Deaf Service Psychological Therapist. Chris Stirling, Vice President at CPI Europe represented CPI and attended review meetings to review project progress.
The overall aim of the project was to:
- Develop a British Sign Language (BSL) Glossary of MAPA terminology to provide equal access to MAPA training programmes for Deaf participants.
- For BSL interpreters to have access to the BSL Glossary prior to the training so they can work effectively with the instructors and Deaf participants.
- Develop guidelines for MAPA instructors when working with BSL interpreters and Deaf participants.
This resulted in the project team working closely together to create a film that can be used pre, during and post-delivery of the MAPA training programme to Deaf learners. The resource will be used within Cygnet and externally for other organisations and will help Deaf learners gain a better understanding of the values, philosophies, knowledge and skills contained within the MAPA programme.
“As always, the project team at Cygnet Hospital Bury have demonstrated a high commitment to their role and the people they support and it is without doubt that their efforts will have a positive impact on the learning experience of Deaf staff.”Chris Stirling, Vice President at Crisis Prevention Institute Europe
In addition, CPI have also talked about working with the Bury team to adapt the resource so that it can be used for Deaf family members and Deaf service users to explain about MAPA, why staff are trained and when MAPA should and shouldn’t be used On completion, CPI will look to make the resource available via their on-line platform and APP so that learners can access the information prior, during and after a training event to increase understanding, retention and transfer of learning into the workplace.
Well done to the team at Bury for all your hard work on this wide reaching project, you deserve the recognition.