SIS is celebrating 30 years! Our AGM was a fantastic opportunity for staff, Linguists, Trustees, Service Users and partners to come together. Over 160 people attended to mark this important milestone as a charity and social enterprise. 18 Interpreters worked in 12 languages so that our beneficiaries were fully involved. Our fantastic Linguists were at…
We are very proud to publish our 2023-2024 Annual Review Investing to Grow It is hard to believe we are 30! We began small. We delivered 600 interpreting sessions a year in 15 languages. Today we manage 20,000 interpreting sessions a year in 47 languages. Over 30 years we provided 300,000+ interpreting sessions for 25,000…
Hello. My name is Hanno Koppel, and for ten years, until 2020, I was a counsellor for the NHS in Brighton and Hove. I worked with asylum seekers and refugees (I was a trauma specialist) I needed interpreters in many of my sessions – I worked with over fifty different languages. At the beginning I…
The recent tragic events in Southport, where both children and adults were killed or seriously wounded, are heartbreaking. Our deepest sympathies go out to the affected families and the entire community. It is both inexcusable and appalling that these terrible circumstances have been exploited by far-right racists and Islamophobes, leading to shocking acts of violence…
SIS was really pleased to work with Best Foot Music, Brighton Jubilee Library and EuroMernet to celebrate Refugee Week. We focussed on the positive contribution that refugees make, their resilience and some of their stories. The theme this year was Our Home We heard some poetry addressing exile and enjoyed beautiful Oud playing from Bashir. It…
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 and subsequent Home Office actions is creating a sense of alarm amongst people who feel that they may be targeted for removal to Rwanda. It is very important that we work with others to promote reliable and accessible information. This is something we worked hard to…
This is the 14th continuous year of our Customer Service Excellence (CSE) journey. This year we worked with a new Assessor. We also involved the whole staff team in considering together all the evidence we wanted to submit – an important development. www.customerserviceexcellence.uk.com https://www.customerserviceexcellence.uk.com/media/1080/updatedcontacts_csestandard_2024.pdf We secured an exceptional 15 areas of Compliance Plus for our…
SIS has supported, sponsored and promoted Chinese New Year celebrations in Brighton & Hove for more than 25 years. Good relations with the Chinese community have always been very important to our work. We have been delighted to join in celebrations and use the opportunity to distribute translated self-referral cards and explain how people can…
We received some great feedback from a Social Worker about one of our Community Interpreters: “I wanted to mention how impressed I was by your interpreter X who supported myself and my client. As well as her language and interpreting skills, her sensitivity, empathy, diplomacy, and particularly her knowledge of x culture and history, was…
We have been supporting a Service User with regular wellbeing appointments. They have had a SIS Community Interpreter for 10 hourly sessions spread over 3 months. The same interpreter has been involved. This helps to build trust and to improve outcomes. We received this unsolicited feedback from the practitioner: “I would like to give some…
