An established Deaf-led service provider, with almost 20 years of experience supporting and raising awareness of the Deaf community. We are proud of our successes and bring strong expertise and experience in all aspects of deafness.
Above all, we are driven by our passion for ensuring Deaf people achieve and succeed in every area, particularly in the workplace and education.
We’ve built a reputation around quality, honesty, and more importantly, taking the time to really understand what clients want. We then carefully match our provision to meet that need, which makes for great customer satisfaction and has enabled us to develop our brand.
Employment
Recognising the importance of supporting people back to work post-Covid ,we aim to work in partnership with prime contractors and other businesses to reach into the untapped talent pool of the Deaf community and contribute to the achievement of disability employment targets. We are able to advise on the Access to Work process, manage the associated paperwork and provide all relevant communication services covered by the award.
Our Employment team will empower Deaf people to:
- Become work-ready, through skills training and placement opportunities;
- Get work, via supported job searches, applications, interview preparation, and job coaching;
- Stay in work, ensuring Access to Work provision of communication support and further job coaching, if required.
This service builds on our success securing 24 Deaf apprenticeships at blue chip organisations a few years ago, which we achieved without any funding or partnerships, just sheer determination to support young deaf people onto the employment ladder and fantastic co-operation from employers.
Interpreting
We provide a range of language support professionals to meet the needs of each individual, company or organisation across a range of work and education domains.
The move to remote working over the last year has accelerated our plans to provide Video Relay Interpreting (VRI) services, which are now available to cover on-demand BSL interpreting, as well as remote online service provisions for many of our regular clients.
Training
We provide a suite of consultancy and training for individuals, groups and companies, both in-person and online.
Starting with Deaf Awareness, we provide onsite group training, exciting new online learning packages for 1 – 10,000+ leaners, plus tailored advice and support to teams to ensure inclusion of Deaf people in their place of work.
We deliver BSL training, from introductory sessions to get you started, through to qualifications which follow the curriculum of leading awarding body, Signature. We can deliver training on client sites, from our classroom and through our new online learning packages.
Plus, we’ve just launched our amazing new 1-1 service, BSL Guru, for tailored individual learning. So, we really do have all training bases covered.
Education
Positive Signs provide Non-Medical Helper (NMH) support workers for college and university students who receive Disabled Student Allowance (DSA). We also provide BSL Interpreters, Communication Support Workers, Electronic Notetakers and Speech to Text Reporters (STTR).
Translation
Translating written materials into BSL makes sure clients and employers are accessible to Deaf people. Whether that’s their job advertisements, recruitment processes, induction materials, websites, or in-house policies and procedures for staff. Translating materials into BSL shows potential employees you take inclusion seriously and breaks down barriers for Deaf people in the employment marketplace.
Positive Signs can offer BSL Translation services for employers.