Alongside North Lanarkshire Council’s equalities officer, Audrey, I was enrolled into an eight week British Sign Language (BSL) course with roughly forty of our staff. As the equalities officer for the SNP group in NLC, I felt it was important to build upon the links I had made with Deaf Services Lanarkshire to improve my understanding of how I can be of support to the Deaf community.

The BSL training was an amazing experience to be a part of and I am very glad I had the chance to participate in the weekly two-hour lessons. We learnt a significant amount given the very short time period we had to work with. By the end of the eight weeks, we could all sign about our families, money, days of the week, greet each other and have a polite, albeit short, conversation.

Our Deaf tutor taught us completely in silence, and the experience was fantastic in ensuring we were forced to fully immerse ourselves in learning BSL. The BSL training experience was fantastic from beginning to end and I hope that over the next couple of years I can be of further support to the Deaf community in raising their issues at a local authority level through my equalities roles and beyond.

(Pictured with Carly, Chief Executive of Deaf Services Lanarkshire)