A HEALTH authority is backing plans for an interpreting service to help more than 200,000 people in the Tees Valley and County Durham areas with hearing impairment.

The £157,000 scheme would involve health and social care professionals bringing together primary care trusts, hospitals and social services departments.

In total, 21 organisations have been asked to contribute just under £7,500 to help 202,300 people in the area who have some degree of hearing loss. The new service would be tailored to individual needs rather than rely on the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, in Manchester, as people have to at the moment.

It would develop a database of interpreters covering different ages, sexes, ethnic backgrounds and hearing impairment languages, of which there are six different types.

The database would draw on the expertise of interpreters living all over the North, from North Tyneside to North Yorkshire.

Any spare capacity could then be offered on a paid-for basis to the private sector such as banks, lawyers, private schools and the police.

Darlington PCT heard that the ambitious service will improve patients quality of care and experience of the NHS.

The board was urged by Noreen Chaplin, a sign language tutor at Darlington College of Technology, to make doctors more aware of the communications problems deaf people can have with medics.