WHERE
InForma Zentrum für Hörgeschädigte gGmbH is a social enterprise in the north of Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany, founded in May 1998. The non-profit organisation employs, supports, counsels and accompanies the disabled, especially the deaf and hard of hearing, with the aim of integrating them into the employment market. Currently there are 33 employees, including 16 severely disabled, most of them hard of hearing. The counselling department of InForma offers advice on assisted living, services for integration (InForma runs a specialised mediation service for the hard of hearing, called Integrationsfachdienst - IFD), attendance for hard of hearing people who have a job, interpreting services in sign language, family assistance, as well as advanced training. The activities of the production line include industrial sewing and alterations, laundry and assembly work.
Successes and failures in integrating a hearing-impaired person
InForma Zentrum für Hörgeschädigte gGmbH is a social enterprise in the north of Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany, founded in May 1998. The non-profit organisation employs, supports, counsels and accompanies disabled, especially deaf and hard of hearing people with the aim of integrating them into the employment market. Currently there are 33 employees, including 16 severely disable, most of them hard of hearing. The counselling department of InForma offers advice on assisted living, services for integration (InForma runs a specialised mediation service for hard of hearing people, called Integrationsfachdienst - IFD), attendance for hard of hearing people who have a job, interpreting services in sign language, family assistance, as well as advanced training. The activities of the production line include industrial sewing and alterations, laundry and assembly work.
InForma is a member of the ’Diakonie’ (Diakonisches Werk der Evangelischen Kirche im Rheinland), one of the six German welfare organisations. In Germany the ’Diakonie’ is the institution for the social work of the protestant church. It is a non-profit association with 26,800 institutions with more than 420,000 employees.
WHY
In the past, hard of hearing people only worked in the production department of the integration company. The integration of a new hard of hearing employee in the production team normally does not cause any difficulties: technical aids are already provided and there are colleagues able to communicate via sign language to give instructions to the new employee. For meetings concerning the production, internal interpreters joined the group.
In the counselling department there were only employees with normal hearing. To improve the counselling service to the hard of hearing clients as well as to integrate hard of hearing people into all areas of the company, InForma recruited a hard of hearing youth care worker in September 2005. The pedagogic team was faced with new challenges concerning technical equipment, organisation of the working place, organisation of team meetings, communication among staff members and the participation of the newcomer in informal ways of communication.
HOW
First of all, the working place was organised together with the new employee. In order to make the adjustment to the new job easier and to provide a contact person, the new colleague shares an office with an employee who is able to hear properly. Her writing desk was placed in a position which enables her at any time to see people entering the room and the main entrance.
It was also considered installing a light signal in order to make her aware of incoming faxes, the door bell or persons entering the room. Because of the extraordinary technical charges this signal has not been arranged yet.
The technical equipment is completed with a visual telephone providing the hard of hearing employee with a facility to communicate via sign language with other persons on the phone. A mobile phone which receives SMS and faxes was also made available and the new staff member is now accessible when she is out of office. In order to provide the best equipment possible, there was an opportunity to learn from a hard of hearing employee in a nearby social company. He presented the technical equipment in his use and told about the advantages and disadvantages.
Team meetings were completely restructured. Instead of 1.5 hours’ non-stop meetings there is a break after 45 minutes. The hard of hearing staff member needs a short break because visual communication is quite exhausting. In addition, it is necessary to announce requests to speak to make sure that the colleague knows who is actually speaking at each moment.
At first, the colleagues who are able to hear properly and who know the sign language acted as interpreters. But it turned out to bear several disadvantages: not everyone in the team is able to use sign language efficiently. Therefore, the same colleagues were always acting as interpreters and were thus not able to actively participate in the meeting. Additionally, the staff members lacked specific techniques necessary for interpreting and consequently, it was not possible to provide the hard of hearing colleague with a satisfactory interpretation. For that reason the integration agency was asked to provide the hard of hearing colleague with so-called ‘working assistance‘. The integration agency complied with the request.
Since then, a neutral interpreter regularly participates in the team meetings, and every staff member is able to take part in the discussions without a linguistic barrier. However, there was a lot of discussion between the hearing colleagues about the professional discretion of the interpreter: Can the team speak frankly about internal topics (e.g. financial situation of the company)? It took a long time until the team had confidence in the interpreter. It is helpful that the interpreter does not change very often.
An agenda is required for the meetings, and it is very important for the hard of hearing colleague to get the minutes of the meetings. The minutes must be written very accurately, for example, it is very difficult for deaf people to handle shortcuts.
Informal conversations among colleagues as well as between staff members and the manager remain a challenge. Most of the time, the hard of hearing colleague is not involved in the exchange of information. A lot of information is exchanged in informal conversations, like in the kitchen while preparing a coffee. If the hard of hearing colleague enters the room, she is not able to jump into this conversation. The hearing colleagues have to sum up for her – this takes a lot of time. In addition, there might be the problem of the different competences in sign language; some colleagues avoid the conversation with the deaf colleague because they are uncertain in using the sign language. Another reason may be that for the hearing colleagues it is exhausting to switch into sign language every time the deaf colleague enters the room.
For more information: InForma Zentrum für Hörgeschädigte gGmbH, gkissinger(at)informa.org