Mr. John Sherwin:

On the national health plan, there are recommendations in the WHO relating to early intervention and sign languages being cost-effective as part of a suite of interventions. It is new for us to see what are basically medical-approach documents starting to refer to cultural issues. We are advocates of cultural issues, so we are not experts on the medical side, but we know that when approached by parents service providers in this area will follow the parents' guidance as to what they want. We believe the parents are not educated enough to make educated choices because they are not being offered research-driven facts about their child's potential. It is too late for parents to say they should have encouraged their child to learn ISL when the child is 15 years of age and finding the cochlear implant is not working for them in secondary education. There are children getting caught in the gap. We need research to show that, so it can come back to policy decisions. There are recommendations in the WHO report we cite in our response that should be followed. The national health plan needs to have more education for parents about the options and knock-on effects. We are pushing for bilingualism. It is not a choice of one or the other.

The Deputy asked about meaningful supports for equality. We have launched our three-year strategic plan and it covers a lot of ways that will support meaningful engagement and supports. We are trying to promote reading of that, understanding of it and engagement with us on it.

On the Disability Act, as cultural rather than medical advocates, it is a little bit outside our area of expertise. However, we are a founding member of the DPO Network and we work closely with other disability colleagues to try to advise Government on updates to Acts. We will certainly be responding on that.