1.1 The Reason for this Guide
Over the last few years, the State Confederation of the Deaf (CNSE) has noticed an increase in the number of deaf immigrants arriving to Spain. According to CNSE’s data, during 2010 the different Federations in the various Autonomous Regions helped around 636 deaf immigrants.
The CNSE and its member entities have started various initiatives with the intention of addressing the needs of deaf immigrants and making their integration easier by providing them with information adapted to their communicative reality:
- To refer to other services and/or resources
- To offer interpretation in sign language
- To offer courses adapted to their communicative reality
As a consequence, the Coordination Network was created in 2003 in order to help deaf immigrants by:
- Sharing the initiatives of the various Federations and Associations which are members of the CNSE
- Starting to cooperate with and coordinate the different public and private resources available for immigrants
- Carrying out informative and formative courses
- Providing information about employment opportunities, legal news, etc.
- Establishing common systems of work
- Promoting awareness about the situation of deaf immigrants, and the difficulties they encounter accessing the available resources, to progressively improve that situation
After all that work, it was decided to organize the information in a more thorough and clear way opting for the creation of this informative guidebook for deaf immigrants.
