2017-18 Trustees

Annual Report
 Contents

CDA’s Vision 3 Community 8

Drop Ins
Over 50’s Group
Strategic Aims 3 Sky Watchers
BSL Gathering at the Argo Lounge
Theatre
Trustees 3 Deaf Clubs
Ladybird Boat Trip
Deaf Church
Activities to raise funds 4 JCI
Fundraising Social Media and Website
Cambridge Half Marathon Newsletter
Studio Equipment
Befriending Project
Building Work Campaigning 10
Health
Healthwatch Report
Social Enterprises 4 Deaf Cards
CDA Life North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust
Social Inclusion Police Engagement
Care Employment
Sign Language Academy
Interpreting
Volunteering 10
Our Buildings & Offices 5
Cambridge Sports 11
Huntingdon Raptors
Peterborough Peterborough United’s Deaf Football Teams
March Sammy’s Sports Clubs
Yoga
Youth Activity Club with Sense
Support & Advocacy 6
Cambridgeshire
Peterborough Thanks 12
Advocacy Volunteers
Freedom Programme Organisations and Businesses
Open Support Services Trusts and Foundations
Suzanne Foulstone Software and IT Providers
Peterborough City Council Groups
Cambridge Regional College English Courses

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CDA’s Vision
Cambridgeshire Deaf Association (CDA) exists to
support the welfare and interests of Deaf people
living in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
CDA works mainly with the Deaf community or
people for whom deafness or deafblindness is a
significant consideration when communicating.

Strategic Aims
Our Strategic Aims were set by our board of Trustees in alignment with our charity objects
set out in our constitution. They are to:

Grow Develop Increase Campaign

To grow the range of To develop and To develop To campaign for
services, support and demonstrate good partnerships and equality.
community events that governance. fundraise to increase
we provide to the deaf our financial security.
people of
Cambridgeshire.

This report demonstrates how we have worked to achieve those aims in the year.

Trustees
Our board of Trustees met quarterly throughout the year. In each meeting the Trustees reviewed
the financial position of the strategy against our budget and the performance of the charity
against its strategic aims and annual plan and are aware of risks to the organisation. The board is
made up of a mix of deaf and hearing people. Elaine Heath (Norfolk) resigned as a Trustee in
February 2018 and we thank her for her time and positive contributions.

The board is made up of a mix of deaf people and people who are not deaf from a range of
business, professional and charitable backgrounds. The board has a range of skills which benefit
the Charity. The board will continue to seek to add new Trustees to the board with appropriate
experience.

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 Activities to raise funds
1029 Fundraising
Recruitment of a fundraiser. We won a grant from Comic Relief to help pay for the recruitment
of a Trust Fundraiser. We recruited Rory Munro in July and this has helped develop our
capability to raise money for important projects throughout the year.

Cambridge Half Marathon

For the first time we actively recruited runners to run for CDA in the Cambridge Half Marathon
in March. 14 Runners took part and raised £4,000 for the Association.

14 Runners Studio Equipment

raising We received funding from the Evelyn Trust and Greggs to improve our video studio in
£4,000 Cambridge. The funds went towards new IT equipment, autocue and a camera. This has enabled
us to improve the quality of the videos we produce to communicate with BSL users and reduce
the time taken to produce them.

Befriending Project
A major piece of work we undertook was to bid to The Cambridgeshire Community Foundation
and other trusts to pay for a volunteer coordinator and the costs of running a volunteer project
across the county. We won the bid after a thorough and competitive process. We also received
funding for this project from the Huntingdon Freemen’s Trust and the Mrs Smith and Mount Trust.

Building Work
We were successful in raising £18,000 to convert the Bar Room at our building into an office
space for our staff. This enabled us to let out more office space and generate more income
for the Association.

Social Enterprises
We are In order to generate more funds for the association and support our aims,

OPEN we engage in business activities in line with our charitable objectives.

CDA Life Social Inclusion

CDA provide support to clients with budgets to assist them in increasing independence and
developing social skills. We worked with 13 clients and delivered 2,200 hours of support.

Care
Working with Action Deafness, we help provide personal care to six clients in Cambridgeshire.
The project has delivered over 7,000 hours personal care in the year with carers who are
proficient in British Sign Language. This means care can be delivered in a way that meets the
client’s needs.

Sign Language Academy

Our Sign Language Academy taught BSL Level 1 and 2 to students in Peterborough, Cambridge
and Huntingdon. This promotes the use of sign language which benefits deaf people. We also
held well attended BSL Basics courses that received positive reviews from people that attended.
We also delivered Deaf Awareness Training to various organisations throughout the year to
improve the general understanding of deafness and hearing loss and to improve communication
between deaf and hearing people.

Interpreting
We provided a BSL interpreting service to a student in Cambridge this year and will look to
4 increase the amount of interpreting we do in the coming years through working with other providers.
Our Buildings and Offices
Cambridge
Our building is important and we continued to invest in it through the year. We raised funds to
convert the old snooker/bar room into an attractive office space for our staff who had out-
grown our traditional office. This allowed us to generate more rental income and funds for our
work from the vacated space.

Huntingdon
We also began to share our office space in Huntingdon with NYAS (National Youth Advocacy
Service) and now also rent a smaller room downstairs so we can hold our Open Support
Services in a more convenient place.

Peterborough
We now have two desks at the Allia Future Business Centre in Peterborough which has become
a hive of activity for our staff and volunteers. Allia is conveniently placed, has excellent facilities
and allowed us to grow our operations in Peterborough.

March
We opened a monthly Open Support Service in March at the Town Hall building. We rent
a small, low-cost office to provide this service.

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 Support and Advocacy
Our Support and Advocacy Team is a vital source of support for deaf
people in our area.

In total we received 851 referrals from deaf people or other sources.

The top reasons for referrals was to help deal with correspondence,
accessing services, claiming benefits and issues relating to health.
Due to increasing demand, we created the role of Service Manager
for the Support and Advocacy service to allow for better management
of referrals and of staff.

Cambridgeshire
Our Cambridgeshire County Council contract entered its 5th year and saw a dramatic rise in
referrals. This is due to a change in the way we report referrals but we also saw more deaf
people than ever come forward for support on a wider range of issues. We supported 100
deaf people across the County.

Peterborough
In Peterborough we opened our new Open Support and Advocacy service to fill two needs. The
first is to provide deaf people with an equivalent to a ‘helpline’ that is offered under the Total
Voice Advocacy partnership. We help deaf people identify if they need advocacy and make
the referral if necessary. If the issue is not advocacy we can either support or refer on to other
organisations. We supported 70 deaf people in Peterborough with 260 issues.

Advocacy
We invested in the training of our staff in the year with three members of staff undertaking
formal training. This ensures we have the skills to best advocate for our clients. We provided
independent advocacy to 96 people in the year on a range of issues many including advocating
for deaf people, in court situations. Health was the number one reason people sought advocacy
support from CDA.

Freedom Programme
We continued to provide anti-domestic abuse training for deaf women with the support of a
grant from Cambridgeshire and Peterborough councils. We are the only place in the UK where
the Freedom Programme is available in British Sign Language. The course is aimed at keeping deaf
women safe from domestic abuse and help them recognize what it is and then escape it.

Open Support Services

Continued We opened a new Open Support Services in March and Peterborough in addition to the four
support and services available in Peterborough, Cambridge and Huntingdon. Open Support Services provide a
convenient and often essential method for deaf people to receive support at a consistent time
training and day of the week. We provided 260 hours of support to deaf people during the year.

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Suzanne Foulstone
In April we received the tragic news of the passing of a long-time volunteer and community
figure, Suzanne Foulstone who died in a road traffic accident. Many of her friends were affected
by her death and the association did what it could to support those people. We arranged a
memorial meeting to take place in the following days to give her friends an opportunity to come
together, reflect on her life and share their memories.

In addition using money donated in her memory we arranged for a driving safety and awareness
course to be held in Peterborough to educate the deaf drivers on how to increase safety on the
roads. Further, we paid for a professional counsellor who is fluent in BSL to provide group grief
counselling to members of the deaf community who wanted support to come to terms with
their loss.

Peterborough City Council Groups

We worked with Peterborough City Commissioners to set up working groups of deaf people. Creation
We initially instigated an Over-50’s panel and following that a more general group. Those groups
have now merged into a Sensory Services Partnership board where CDA and members of the
of working
deaf community are regular attendees. In addition, we continued to attend the Physical and groups
Sensory Partnership boards in Cambridgeshire.

Cambridge Regional College English Courses

We supported Cambridge Regional College to run courses to improve access to the English
language. We created a video in BSL to promote the service and referred people to the college
so that they could take advantage of the free service.
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 Community
CDA invests in developing the local deaf community.
Our Community Coordinator Ky Dai leads our efforts to increase the
cultural and social development of the deaf community in our area
with support from many other members of our staff.

Drop Ins
Attendance at our Drop In events and social events increased by 74% from 2016 to 2017 to 2659
attendances by deaf people, professionals and others.

Our drop ins are an opportunity for deaf people to socialize, receive useful information or refer
in for support or advocacy. Our drop ins are visited by guest speakers from other organisations
74% too.

increase in Over 50’s Group

attendance Our Over 50’s club meets every month and often goes on day trips to interesting locations.
20-30 people are involved in the Over-50’s group because it provided good company and
events focused on BSL.

Sky Watchers
Sky Watchers is a group run by Trustee Godfrey Palmer and volunteer David
Kettle. The group met regularly and focused on topics relating to astronomy.

BSL Gathering at the Argo Lounge

Our Monthly BSL gathering at the popular Argo Lounge in Peterborough is an ideal opportunity
for socializing but is also widely used by people who are learning British Sign Language. Its
location in the centre of Peterborough helps put BSL users at the centre of activity in the City.

Theatre
We worked with Jumped Up Theatre during their Platform8 festival which saw two productions
with BSL interpreting put on at the Undercroft Theatre in Hampton. We have developed a good
relationship which we hope will lead to more accessible theatre in the years to come.

Deaf Clubs
We continued to host Cambridge Deaf Club which runs each month and is run by independent
volunteers.

Ladybird Boat Trip

In August 2017 we held the annual Ladybird Boat Trip in Huntingdon which is designed for deaf
people with additional physical or learning needs. The trip went well with 8 people attending
supported by CDA Life Staff and volunteers.

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Deaf Church
Cambridgeshire Deaf Church continued to meet at our building in Cambridge on a monthly basis
for lunchtime bible study. The Deaf Church is an important element of the lives of a group of
people within the deaf community and CDA shares information about church activities on our
website and newsletter.

JCI
JCI Cambridge are the local branch of an international organization of young people who want
to make a difference in their local communities. JCI fundraised for us during deaf awareness
week and held an event at our hall about building confidence. The attendance of deaf people
was disappointing but we continued to work together and put on a more successful event later
in the next year.

Social Media and website

Our website and social media channels represent a great way for deaf people to get information
about our services and other useful information. We place a high priority on producing
information in British Sign Language and produced 32 of our own videos in the year.
Our videos were seen at least 100,000 times and watched for at least 40,000 minutes.

Newsletter
Our newsletter, Cambridgeshire Deaf News, was produced quarterly and well received by the
deaf community. It is a written representation of what information has been provided on our
website and social media in the last 3-months with some additional news and comment from
key people at CDA. We posted the newsletter to 200 recipients, emailed to 100 more and they
were also viewed 1,000 times online.

The numbers of people who have actively renewed their wish to receive the newsletter has
dropped significantly so in future, Cambridgeshire Deaf News will take the form of a more
simple bulletin.
Viewed
1000 times
online

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 Campaigning
CDA took the lead in campaigning on important issues
relating to the lives of deaf people in our areas.

Health

Healthwatch Deaf cards North West Anglia

Report We continued to distribute NHS Foundation Trust
For the third year in our Deaf Cards. Deaf Cards Working in Partnership with
succession we campaigned are bright yellow cards that North West Anglia NHS
for better access to health indicate to health Foundation Trust, we support
for deaf people. We worked professionals that they must them to run an ‘Accessibility
in partnership with book interpreting or Co- Production Sub Group’
Healthwatch to create a communication support. which gets the views of deaf
report called ‘Accessible We have distributed almost patients directly in order to
Information as Standard’ 10,000 of these cards now improve services.
which was launched to across the UK.
health professionals and
patients. The meeting was
attended in the vast
majority by deaf people and
since Hinchingbrooke and
Peterborough Hospitals have
recommissioned their
interpreting services to
include on-demand video
interpreting.

Police Engagement
In November we invited the Police and Crime Commissioner, Jason Abelwhite, to meet with the
deaf community. He pledged to do more to engage with deaf people and since then members
of the deaf community have met with him on two more occasions. We have now appointed
Christopher and Tracey Clelland as our Police Liaison Officers who will work to improve
engagement with the Police on an ongoing basis.

Employment
Advocate and Caseworker Matt Wheeler has led our work on improving access to Employment.
Matt has developed a relationship with Clarion who have a service that helps deaf people find
employment and with the local Job Centre. Meetings and presentations have been held at our
Peterborough Drop In.

Volunteering
During the year we had 5 volunteers work with us on a
regular basis to run coffee mornings and cover our drop-in services.
We also recruited Angus McGuiness (Trustee) as a Volunteer
Caseworker and Mary Godden as a volunteer Social Worker.
Thank you to all our volunteers in 2017-18

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Sports
CDA recognizes the benefits that sport can bring to well-being. We also
know that many sports are not accessible to deaf people so with that in
mind we work hard to make sports accessible to the deaf community.
We were pleased to receive Cambridge United’s Sport
in the Community Award in April 2017.

Raptors
Working with National Deaf Blind Charity Sense, CDA led the way in creating a new basketball
team for deaf players in Peterborough. The Peterborough Raptors were born and now have 15
players attending training and games and will compete in national and local tournaments.

Peterborough United’s Deaf Football Teams

Working with Peterborough United, we have continued to provide deaf footballing
opportunities for children and adults who are deaf or hard of hearing. The club has around 30
players regularly involved in the year.

In order to improve the standard of coaching, former GB Manager Philip Gardner was recruited
to run the men’s team. Restaurant chain McDonalds were successfully recruited as the main
sponsor for the team’s kit.

The under 13 and under 16 age teams competed at the National Tournament at Manchester City’s
training ground and the under 16’s finished runners-up to Charlton.

Sammy’s Sports Clubs

Working with SportWorks in a project funded by the National Lottery, we continued our holiday
sports clubs across Cambridgeshire. The feedback from the children and parents was very posi-
tive with a big range of activities on offer for the children including Wakeboarding. CDA provid-
ed Sport Works with deaf awareness training and CDA staff were on hand throughout to assist
with communication.

Yoga
Working with Sense and the Satyam Yoga and Wellbeing Centre, we provided Yoga with BSL
interpreting for the deaf community. It is enjoyed by a small group of deaf people who regularly
enjoy the sessions. The sessions were held at our building in Cambridge but will move to the
Yoga Centre in Cambridge soon.

Youth Activity Club with Sense

Once again, as part of our strong partnership with Sense we collaborated in two youth activity
groups in Peterborough that were aimed at young people with hearing and / or sight loss. Sadly
they were not well attended and the project was stopped.

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 Thanks
Thank
CDA would like to thank all our supporters, volunteers,

you
donors and partners. Without you, we would not be
able to do our work.

Volunteers Trusts and Foundations

Angus McGuiness BLF, Awards For All
Brendan Casey Cambridgeshire Community Foundation
Heather Owen Groundwork East
Julie Garner Huntingdon Freemen’s Trust
Mary Godden Laing Family Trusts
Ricky Bryant Masonic Charitable Foundation
Truyen Dai Morrisons Foundation
Jan Smith Postcode Community Trust
Santander
Organisations and Businesses The Albert Hunt Trust
Action Deafness The Aviva Community Fund
Allia Future Business Centre The Baily Thomas Charitable Fund
Cambridge Regional College The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation
Cambridge United The Boshier-Hinton Foundation
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough The Evelyn Trust
Daryl Jackson The Frank Litchfield General Charitable Trust
Domestic Violence Partnership The Greggs Foundation
Cambridgeshire County Council The Inman Charity
Camsight The Lionel Wigram Memorial Trust
Caroline Bickerton The Marsh Christian Trust
Clarion The Mrs Smith And Mount Charitable Trust
Europress Print The Percy Bilton Charity
Healthwatch The Persimmon Charitable Foundation
JCI Cambridge The Pye Foundation
Job Centre Plus The Rank Foundation Limited
Mind The Sobell Foundation
Nene Valley Basketball Club The Strangward Trust
North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust Woodroffe Benton Foundation
NYAS
Peterborough City College Software and IT Providers
Peterborough City Council Adobe
Peterborough United Breathe HR
Platform8 and Jumped Up Theatre Ghost IT
Satyam Yoga Centre Microsoft
Sense Slack
Sportworks Trello
The Argo Lounge Peterborough
The Emmeline Centre
The High Flyer Ely
The Papworth Trust
The Stroke Association
Vivacity
Voiceability
Women’s Aid

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