IF YOU’RE DEAF and young and live in Hackney, you have a problem.
The borough has no local school provision for deaf children so usually they have to travel out of Hackney, which makes it hard for children to develop friends locally.
Beyond the age of five, there is little support in the borough for deaf children, says the Hackney Deaf Children’s Society (HDCS), which has stepped into the breach and tomorrow Friday 13 May 2016 it gets help from, of all things, AOL.
Volunteering to help the society at the Wilton Estate in Hackney has been taken up for the media-technology company’s seventh annual, and worldwide, Monster Help Day.
Sixty AOL staffers will join the Wilton Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Association gardening project to help to prepare the estate for a special tea party the next day to encourage local residents and families with deaf children to come together.
Since the estate’s 99 flats were opened in 1950, it has had the usual successes and failures of big-scale accommodation.
The complex had a good start with an outstanding design by London architect Graham Dawbarn (1893-1975) which, since thoughtful attention from the present council and horticultural efforts by some tenants, has been looking an increasingly good place to live.
Thank heaven for volunteers.
Hamish Scott 120516
* Backstory: Hackney estate tackles druggies; Chelsea blooms East End stylee
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