Lucy is 11 years old and due to go to secondary school in September. Lucy is profoundly deaf and communicates using BSL. She will be travelling to attend a school that can meet her needs as sadly, deaf schools and bases close or rarely fully meet needs for fluent signers. 

Deaf children and adults are statistically more likely to suffer some sort of mental health issues at some point in their lives due to isolation, communication barriers, bullying, disabled by society (e.g. not providing subtitles for cinema, not having name displays in health care when patient is due to be seen, etc.) and with this recent lockdown, D/deaf people will experience this all the more with much more isolation but also not having accessible support, e.g. reasonable adjustments not being put in place to call for services like school vouchers, etc. 

Even during this short amount of time of lockdown, we have seen a change in Lucy. Our usually happy and positive girl is noticeably struggling. She has a family who love her very much, we can all sign, I’m a Teacher of the Deaf so can more than competently support her with her work and her school are in contact as much as possible. So what’s going wrong...? She is missing school, being around her D/deaf friends and social groups, she is worrying about starting secondary school without any transition and also mourning the potential loss of the final term of her primary school career, not to mention Y6 prom and end of year activities. 

Lucy is one of the lucky ones though and she has a whole network around her to support her but she wants to raise money to support D/deaf children and young people with their mental health. This challenge is in two parts. She will be getting her hair cut and raising money for the NDCS but she will also be donating her gorgeous locks to the Little Princess Trust to help another little girl who may have lost her hair through illness or treatment. My girl truly has a heart of gold, even when she is having a hard time herself!

We have purposely set the goal high because this is a very important cause to support D/deaf children through difficult times and enable them to achieve what they want!  We want this campaign to reach far and wide and so we are aiming high!

She will be getting her hair cut on the 26th of June/July when it is safe to do so and she will be getting it cut at Ava Harrison in Old Swan, Liverpool!

Thank you so much for your support 😊