We have created short videos for people with language needs in Sussex. There are seven language versions: English Arabic Bengali Farsi Polish Romanian Spanish
with more to follow.
The videos explain:
- People’s rights to free interpreting at public service appointments
- How to contact SIS to book an interpreter for an appointment
- How to contact SIS to make a GP appointment, register with a GP Surgery or securing access to other public services
The idea came about when we were approached by the Community Engagement Team at West Sussex Citizen’s Advice Bureau. We presented to their Mid-Sussex Community Champions group, explaining rights and access to interpreting services. The SIS Projects Team created a short video in English for the Champions to share in their communities.
This was our starting point. We wanted to support more people. Understanding the right to interpreting at health and social care consultations is a key first step. Uniquely SIS encourages self-referrals from Service Users. The videos show people how to access our services. Providing trained Community Interpreters supports both the Service User and Service Provider with effective communication and receiving and delivering appropriate support.
Accessing GP appointments has been impacted during the pandemic, especially for our Service Users as telephone options systems, apps and websites all have added language and access barriers. Our Bilingual Volunteer Social Prescribers help patients to register with GPs and to make GP appointments through our . The video explains this support to Service Users and gives them instructions how to contact us to get this much-needed help.
With support from a Digital Grant from Brighton & Hove City Council and funding from SHCP, we created a 4 minute video in six languages. The languages reflect our most commonly requested interpreting and those we have experienced an increase in newly registered Service Users. You can watch them on YouTube:
Feedback has been positive with requests for more language versions to be made in future including Russian, Lithuanian and French.
‘Thank you for those videos, they look great and I will happily share within my networks’ – Kasia Racey – West Sussex Mind
We hope these videos will be useful for you, your communities or those that you work with or support.
If you work with speakers of other languages, please do share the English version with them, as there is a lot of accessible and useful information in it.
Please send any questions or feedback to laura@sussexinterpreting.org.uk
