Ann Birch is one of TIC’s newer members but has been a speech and language therapist for over 30 years, most of that time spent working for the NHS.
Ann recently completed her first case as a TIC member, utilising her deafness specialism to facilitate a defendant’s full participation in her trial at the Central Criminal Court in London.
The legal team needed to know how this defendant could fairly access her trial without being able to hear and without being a British Sign Language (BSL) user.
Ann first met the defendant at the women’s prison, where she had been remanded in custody ahead of her trial. There, Ann carried out a detailed assessment regarding the defendant’s potential communication requirements. This focused heavily on her literacy skills, as reading would be essential in her understanding of court proceedings. How quickly could she read? How long could she sustain visual attention? How much did she understand of what she read? How could she access what was being said in court in ‘real time’? What would be the barriers to communication and what were her strengths?
In this case, the judge accepted all of Ann’s recommendations, including the requirement that she be present for the entire three-week trial. Two recorders were also in place so that everything said in court could be typed in real time and fed to a tablet placed against the transparent barrier of the dock. Ann advised on the font size and colour background used to minimise visual fatigue.
Where necessary, Ann clarified what was being said in court, provided simple explanations of some of the more complex legal matters under discussion, wrote notes, and kept the defendant focused and calm in the intense courtroom environment.
As the trial progressed, Ann’s role also included intervening when required to ask for breaks when the defendant was showing signs of visual fatigue, asking for a reduction in the speed of information delivery at times and advising on questioning, which can present differently in written rather than auditory form if it relies on intonation in the voice.
Reflecting on her first case, Ann said: “It was rewarding to use my specialism in working with people who are deaf but don’t sign. It was also pleasing that the judge accepted my recommendations in full, including the requirement for this defendant to have an intermediary for the entirety of the trial.”
Ann added: “The defence team was impressed by the report I had prepared, and I received positive feedback from the judge and barristers involved. The defendant told me after the trial that she could not have got through the process without me being ‘her ears’, as she put it.”
Ann said that she was motivated to become an intermediary with The Intermediary Cooperative due to its ethos, particularly its ability to match service users where possible with local intermediaries and intermediaries with particular clinical expertise.
She hopes to be assigned to more cases in her home area of South Wales/West Wales and continue to support vulnerable people elsewhere when there is a deafness-related communication challenge and British Sign Language is not the chosen communication path of that individual.