In September, a Sussex Interpreting Services (SIS) linguist invited a small group of older (50 years +) Arabic speaking Service Users (SUs) to attend a ‘Souk’ style event with stalls and activities to celebrate health, wellbeing, and culture. Bridging Change organised the event, as part of their Ageing Well partnership work in response to needs expressed by older community members through our Community Voices Group partnership.
Six SUs confirmed attendance. When they were invited, they all showed interest and one of them wanted to know if there would be a housing support service and if the attending services could also support a relative who lives elsewhere in the UK. The SUs wouldn’t have found out about the event without the linguist’s support.
On the day of the drop-in event, two SUs attended; the others were contacted again to check the need of any support for attending, two were not feeling well, they sent their apologies and two were not contactable.
The linguist attended together with the SUs to help them navigate the event and understand what the participating services offer, and supported them to take part in activities taking place.
Services represented on the day included:
Ageing Well; offering information on a range of social groups, Health & Wellbeing, Befriending and sport activities for those aged 50+ in Brighton and Hove.
Hearing Loss Support Resource Room; giving information to people with hearing loss on how they can get help in their everyday life around home, at work or whilst out and about.
AbilityNet; is a free digital skills training for older people and disabled adults.
Sussex Interpreting Services; providing contact details and some easy steps on how to leave a phone message or use a simple form in own language to get support either with interpreting or social prescribing.
Racial Harassment Forum; giving information about how to seek support if you are a victim of racism or hate crime.
One of the participants was already familiar with some services like SIS, but they wanted to know more about Ageing Well and AbilityNet.
The other participant was not very familiar with any of the services, they were happy to hear and learn about all of them.
The Community Voices Group was also at the event, and participants were able to share their voice by answering some questions about daily sport activities, needs to access them, where to find them, where they want to hear about them and whether they are experiencing any barriers for access or participation.
Both SUs reported that they are not active. One, due to their health conditions and the other one due to their busy schedule at work (barriers). They both mentioned that they hear about group/sport activities mainly on social media, they want to hear more about it in the church and community centres, they want these to be organised by community organisations and they are happy to receive news about the next events by email.
The participants took leaflets from each organisation, they asked questions about services, they were happy to share their opinions and thoughts, and they also enjoyed the food and mint tea.
