Stop cut in Deaf Services - Elmfield School

We need to keep the Elmfield School open and the Youth Services in the Centre for Deaf People. The young people are our future and we need to keep this going. There are lots of issues can be bring up in the next 10 years if we do not do anything. Below there is a hard fact of what would happens:

Deaf and hard of hearing young people in special schools "had more opportunities to develop interpersonal relations... in contrast to the graduates of mainstream schools, who appeared to be isolated from their environment." (p. 481). It also found that "...students at mainstream schools often experience marginalization because of their difficulties in communicating with their teachers and classmates, which did not happen at the school for the deaf." (p.482). These two factors combined for mainstream pupils seemed to give the result that "their identity and self-esteem were influenced negatively."

"The estimated prevalence rate (of psychiatric disorder) for the HIU population is 57-60.9% or over twice the prevalence in an equivalent hearing population and approximately one and a half times that of the Deaf School group (33-42.4%)". So, basically, deaf kids in mainstream school suffer more mental health problems than deaf kids in Deaf schools, and more mental health problems than their hearing peers.