PPIE Award Winner: Celia Hulme
In this blog series we will be featuring our award winners and highly commended recipients from the Faculty’s ‘Outstanding Contribution to PPIE’ awards. Showcasing the inspirational and outstanding commitment to PPIE that has made a positive difference to our community and highlighting the amazing events, activities, people and groups from across the Faculty.
Our next blog in this series will feature Dr Celia Hulme, a Deaf British Sign Language user who established a group of Deaf citizens to consult on a range of projects. Celia won the Individual Staff category for the 2022 awards.
Of the 11 million deaf or hard of hearing people in the UK, over 87,000 people use British Sign Language (BSL) as their preferred language. However, Deaf BSL users are usually excluded from taking part in health and social care research, as a vast majority of work and initiatives to elicit public engagement are not accessible in BSL.
It is crucial that BSL users are included in health and social care research, as the Deaf community face health inequalities and have little means of influencing linguistically accessible and culturally appropriate care.
Celia Hulme, a Research Associate in the Division of Nursing, Midwifery & Social Work is a Deaf BSL user. She is a member of the Social Research with Deaf People (SORD) group, which works with the Deaf community and other stakeholders to promote the wellbeing of Deaf individuals, families and communities across the life course through high quality, multi-disciplinary applied social research.
As part of her PhD research, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) (Hearing Health), Celia established a revolutionary training course for local Deaf citizens to understand and get involved in influencing health and social care research. She also established the Deaf Experts by Experience Group (DEEG) to collaborate with.
Working with Olivia Joseph, the BRC PPIE project manager, Celia wrote and delivered a 6-week course to induct, support, inform and encourage Deaf BSL users in PPIE. The course was entirely Deaf-led and significant in that participants could learn directly in their own language, without an interpreter.
The course covered group work, EDI, what is research, ethics and PPIE panel duties. The initiative also educated hearing collaborators and researchers on how to feel confident when consulting with Deaf people, and how to ensure that research ideas and methods are inclusive. The training was incredibly well-received, with Deaf people across the UK requesting to be involved or have a training course delivered in their location.
Although operating in Manchester, Celia aims to share DEEGs findings with the research community in the hopes they will use DEEG as a template to create their own experts by experience panels or events. Celia’s exceptional work has also been recognised by the NIHR who have included it as a case study within their EDI researcher toolkit. Celia’s involvement in the development of the project was key to its success. The project is an important stepping stone towards addressing healthcare inequalities faced by Deaf people.
Find Out More:
Celia’s Twitter: @Celie
To find out more about PPIE: watch our short film, sign up to the monthly Public Engagement Digest, visit the PPIE blog, or contact srbmh@manchester.ac.uk.
To read more about other PPIE Award winners visit here
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