Enhancing resilient deaf youth in South Africa

Around 6,200 per year are born in South Africa with a significant degree of permanent deafness and many more become deaf through childhood illness. Over 95% of deaf children are born into hearing families with no prior experience of deafness. Deafness presents a major risk to the acquisition of language with poor literacy and very low educational attainment. For many families deafness also attracts unwelcome stigma, discrimination and society as a whole has low expectations of deaf people's potential despite a normal range of intelligence. The consequences for personal self actualisation, autonomous citizenship and contribution to broader society are far reaching with the majority of deaf adults struggling for employment, access to education and opportunities to lead a normal life. We will develop a series of social interventions using film and visual media to combat current and future public health burden that arises from these consequences.

Our project is focused on building resilience amongst deaf youth through enhancing self esteem, supporting hearing parents to develop their repertoire of emotions based (rather than merely functional) communication and developing practical keep safe resources in a context where deaf young people are especially vulnerable violent crime and abuse. Our chosen medium to achieve these goals is community based participatory film making because the visual is a highly accessible medium for both knowledge acquisition but also knowledge production for those for whom articulation, whether in spoken, signed or written languages, may be severely delayed and because of its non-dependence on the written word.

The project will work with deaf children/young people and their families to explore, produce and edit short films that demonstrate personal potential and ambition with the scope to influence wider public attitudes and act as an educational resource. In working with deaf and hearing filmmakers through workshops and community events the children will also acquire new social-relational skills, have the opportunity to restructure challenging daily experiences of being deaf into potentially inspiring futures through sharing and raising their ambitions of what is possible for them and having access to deaf adult role models through these processes.

Deaf mentors and parents of deaf children will co-create a new emotions-based workshop curriculum to inspire parental confidence in communication about the non-functional aspects of life so emotional worlds and concepts open up to deaf children/young people as resources to enable them to understand their own development and read the emotional reactions of others - both vital aspects of resilience building.

We will create with deaf children/young people a series of interactive films designed to explore keeping safe strategies, prevent abuse, reduce risk and provide deaf young people with a means of knowing of how seek help and support. The community context through which the potential film scenarios are explored, created, filmed, edited and responded to are also learning opportunities for those who will take part in growing their personal and social strategies to combat abuse, neglect and discrimination.

All products will be made freely available in multiple languages, including South African Sign Language, through a Web Doc that will be fully update-able and accessible through a variety of low cost digital means.

The deaf and hearing team working together combine internationally leading expertise in visual anthropology, deaf studies, social research with deaf people and on the ground NGOs providing family centred intervention free at the point of need, parent-led support groups, deaf film makers and supported by the public health office of Gauteng province. The project is process-evaluated by students in deaf education and Deaf studies in South Africa.

The delivery of the project cements a new partnership ready for further research.

The project's outcomes are designed to have immediate and longer-term impacts encompassing a variety of stakeholders.

(i) the process itself of grant planning and delivery facilitates inter-disciplinary knowledge exchange and partnership building;
(ii) its aims and execution identify, provide evidence for and address key areas of risk and resilience building among deaf persons and their families for future development. In a research evidence poor context this is vital in supporting policy and practice innovation;
(iii) the methods being innovated are designed to bring about positive social change among persons who are routinely excluded in terms of language, education, employment and life-chances;
(iv) the products arising from the engagement are sustainable, updatable resources available to continue the work started through this grant to reach an even larger number of potential beneficiaries;
(v) training and capacity building amongst deaf people working with families with deaf children, parent led networks of support and deaf film makers are built in to all stages of the proposed project from first identification of focus, to delivery on the ground and longer term legacy of skills and resources for intervention;
(vi) the engagement and support of the Department of Health, South Africa and our named NGO partners place this project firmly within their agendas with the potential for leverage of future resources and policy development based on evaluation of the impacts of the work carried out.

Vision plays a key role in shaping experiences and understandings of deafness, including sign language and other linguistic and non-linguistic modes of visual communication and expression that have no equivalent in written or spoken language. Consequently, the project will develop new ways of working with visual methods and participatory film practice, alongside film and visual media training, in ways that are relevant to, and ultimately led by deaf persons and researchers, to provide an empowering and socially inclusive way of actively engaging persons living with or affected by deafness in the research process. This will build skills and capacity across a range of lay, activist and academic persons and as such the project's immediate impacts include training and development opportunities for deaf filmmakers, deaf mentors, parents of deaf children and deaf youth from a wide range of social, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. This also provides a practical means of transcending difference between deaf and hearing persons across South Africa's diverse cultural and linguistic communities.

Public impact and engagement, in terms of the project's film and media outputs on resilience building and negotiating risk will be enhanced by combining visual and social media in order to reach a broad public audience, including the families and communities of deaf persons, hearing and non-hearing persons, policy makers and NGOs. Materials will be made freely available on websites and smartphone friendly platforms alongside downloadable formats, DVDs and a dedicated WebDoc site to increase access to the project among academic and non-academic beneficiaries. The project's public potential will be further realised by way of interactive multi-media that have the ability to engage with and communicate to a broad, non-specialised audience. These source materials will have enduring impact by providing a long term, freely available, database for researchers and general members of the public who are living with and/or affected by deafness and visit the website via feeder sites and search engines. The project's public outcomes are designed to benefit a broad range of parties beyond university contexts, including members of the public and their families, those working in professional or voluntary capacities within charities, NGOs and care settings, and among local and national policy makers.