Interpret. The Newsletter of Sheffield Community Access & Interpreting Service

Transcription

1 Interpret The Newsletter of Sheffield Community Access & Interpreting Service Summer 2013 SCAIS, Fulwood House, Old Fulwood Road, Sheffield, S10 3TH Tel / Fax Sheffieldscais@nhs.net Website - 1

2 Welcome to your new look 'Interpret' newsletter. Since moving over to Sheffield Health and Social Care Trust in April 2012, we decided to have a revamp along with the new start. We hope you are all well after the long winter and bank holidays and are looking forward to a beautiful warm summer (fingers crossed). This is the first edition to be fully electronic and being sent via instead of posted out. This is obviously more environmentally friendly so please feel free to forward this newsletter on to anyone you feel would benefit from reading it. Thank you to everyone who supplied addresses over the last few weeks for us to be able to access as many of you as we can. We thought it would be a good idea to use this newsletter to clear up some misunderstandings and confusion that we discovered from the survey. So in this edition there is: results from the customer survey, online booking information, who is in the SCAIS office and when, what to do when you need to cancel appointments, new telephone numbers, additional telephone calls for interpreters, how to set up a 3-way call, Nepali telephone code, staff changes, home visits and information on translations. We hope you find this newsletter both informative and helpful and like the new look. If you have any comments, queries or questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on or or us sheffieldscais@nhs.net RECRUITMENT We are currently accepting applications for Interpreters in the following languages: Albanian, Amharic, Bangla, British Sign Language, Burmese, Czech, Hungarian, Karen, Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili, Kurdish Badinani, Kurdish Kurmanji, Kurdish Sorani (female), Lithuanian, Nepali, Oromo, Slovak, Somali (male), Swahili, Tigrinya, Turkish (female), Twi and Vietnamese Preferably, applicants should be available between , Mon-Fri. Please contact SCAIS on / to request an application. 2

3 Request Summary for The SCAIS office deals with hundreds of calls and thousands of jobs and it is important that we collect your feedback to make sure that we always meet your needs. By collating information on languages and statistics, as well as your feedback, we can see where we need to improve and what trends are emerging. In , SCAIS received requests for interpreters in 68 different languages and provided interpreters for sessions. Of the requests we received, (26.22%) were for Slovak interpreters. The next most requested language was Arabic, with 4374 (11.41%) requests, less half the requests of Slovak. The top ten languages made up 76% of all requests while the other languages made up a total of 24%, which was notably still less than the requests for Slovak. A breakdown of our top ten most requested languages can be seen below: 3

4 The Customer Survey Thank you to all who responded to our annual customer survey, we really do appreciate the time and effort it takes to fill it in and to let us know how we are doing. Few scores changed significantly since last year s survey but there was a fall of 13.15% in satisfaction with booking by fax, presumably due to the fax problems SCAIS experienced over the last twelve months and the unreliability that was therefore experienced. We are looking into an alternative to faxing claim forms and we will inform you as soon as we have one. Satisfaction with online bookings fell by 7.66%. There seemed to be several misunderstandings expressed regarding this system so this may be because of expectation. You will find some useful information on the page 5 detailing the process for online bookings. There were several comments made about the lack of Slovak interpreters. Slovak was the most requested language of and we have prioritised recruitment for Interpreters speaking Slovak. We have recruited a new Salaried Slovak interpreter as well as 3 Freelance interpreters since April, which should help ease the pressure for you. The satisfaction of the admin staff, finance team and the service overall increased and satisfaction with the SCAIS newsletter rose by 12.68%. Thank you. While we had many compliments about the service, staff and interpreters, there also seemed to be misunderstanding around the way SCAIS works. Hopefully you ll find the information in this newsletter helpful. Please see page 8 for details on SCAIS opening hours and the SCAIS team. If you have anything you wish to add, please contact us on /

5 Requesting Interpreters using our Online Booking Form You can book an interpreter online at This is a fast and convenient way of getting your request to us, especially if you have the auto complete function on your web browser. Please note: you may have noticed the red banner at the top of the online booking form recently. This webpage will soon be closed down but we will let everyone know the new address for the online booking form as soon as we can. You can continue to use the current page as usual in the meantime. To book online: Fill in the required fields on the online form. Submit your completed form. You ll receive a 1 st thanking you for your request and the details you completed. You ll receive a 2 nd with a job number a short time later once we have added your request to our database. If you submit a form and do not receive either , please contact us on / to double check your booking. We will contact you if there are any problems with your request Set up Auto-Complete to make your online bookings quicker to complete To set up the auto complete function on your browser, simply follow these steps: Internet Explorer - Go to Tools > Internet Options. In the Content tab and Auto- Complete section click Settings. Tick the Forms box and leave the others blank. Click ok. Firefox - Go to Tools > Options and select the Privacy tab. Tick the box labeled Remember what I enter in forms and the search bar. This will enable you to quickly enter frequently used fields such as the full name of the service you work for, address or address. All you have to do is type in few letters into the fields and the Auto Complete should do the rest. Remember to check the fields that frequently change, such as time of session, date and duration of the session and language in order to book the interpreter correctly. 5

6 Communicating with Deaf Clients If you have a client who is deaf, did you know that you can communicate using Typetalk? This unique method uses the phone to display text messages to relay the information. If you wish to contact a deaf client over the phone using Typetalk, simply dial followed by their usual telephone number. When the other person answers, a Typetalk Relay Assistant will automatically be connected to your call and it is them who type what you say for it to appear in text on the deaf person s phone. If you have any questions or need any advice, is a useful website that should be able to answer your questions. This method should only be used when appropriate: for example relaying of messages, setting up appointments. For anything longer or more complicated, please contact SCAIS on or about booking a British Sign Language interpreter. Meeting Interpreters at Home Visits New Telephone Number If you book an interpreter for a home visit please meet them outside the house or alternatively we can arrange for you to meet them at a nearby landmark. Interpreters are not covered by our insurance if they enter the house alone and if you go inside before they are there you may end up missing the interpreter. Also please make sure you give us your mobile telephone number if you are meeting the interpreter for a home visit, so we can call you in the event of any problems. We have taken into account the comments made about the 0845 telephone number and have secured an additional number for the main SCAIS admin office Please feel free to call admin on either number. The finance telephone number is

7 Additional Telephone Calls If you have booked an interpreter for a session and would like the interpreter to call the client to confirm, please let us know when you would prefer this call to be made. For example if you would like the call to be made in advance to confirm the date and time with the client or would prefer it done a few days before the session to remind the client of the appointment instead. Also please remember to supply the client s telephone number so that the interpreter can call them. If you would prefer, we do have a telephone service which has the facilities for a 3-way call. This means that you can contact the client directly and answer any questions they may have straight away. This is a quick and easy method of conveying messages. If you would like more information or to find out if your service is registered for the telephone service, please contact SCAIS on / How to Set Up a 3-Way Call To set up a 3-way call on the telephone service, simply follow these easy steps: Dial Enter your access code followed by # Press 0 to connect to a member of staff Ask the member of staff for a 3-way conversation and state the language that you need and the client s telephone number. Nepali Telephone Interpreting To get through to a Nepali interpreter using our telephone service, please use the code 741. This does not appear on your cards, so if you would like them to be updated, please contact us on or and we can send more out to you. If you want to register for the telephone interpreting service, please contact us on the above number. If you have any questions, please call the main SCAIS admin office on or

8 Office Opening Hours and the SCAIS Team The SCAIS admin office is open Monday to Friday 8.30am to 5.30pm, except for Thursdays when we are open 8.30am to 1pm, and is manned from 8:00am to 5:30pm. There is always someone here to take your call during this time and your call will only go straight to voic if all the phone lines are busy. On a fully staffed day, we have 7 people answering the phones: Sofia Bibi, Jo Hopkinson, Rachel Murray, Sarah Naylor, Paul Baxter, Jack Lee and Mandeep Singh Jabbal, so please bear with us during busy periods. Paul Herring is in the Finance Dept and he usually works 8:00am to 4:00pm. Please contact him on or sheffield.scaisfinance@nhs.net with any finance queries. Interpreter Co-Coordinator, Kokila Patel, usually works Monday & Tuesday plus Wednesday until 12:00. Please contact her on or kokilapatel@nhs.net with any feedback or issues regarding interpreters, interpreter recruitment or training queries. Operational Manager, Vicky Smith, works Tuesday to Friday. She deals with the everyday running of the office: including providing information on service's usage of SCAIS, and service development and improvement, training for Service Providers, monthly reports, newsletters and everything associated. Her contact number is and is vicky.smith11@nhs.net. Service Manager, Steve Jackson, works full time Monday to Friday. His contact is or steve.jackson@shsc.nhs.uk. If you need any more information, please contact us on or

9 Staff Changes Congratulations to Paul Baxter and wife Marie who welcomed their new son in June (pictured right). The fantastically named Eric Baxter will be the best dressed baby around with all his cute little dinosaur clothing as well as his adorable Star Trek shirt. It may be while before it s decided which football kit he ll be wearing though. Eric is also officially the first SCAIS office baby as Paul and Marie met while working here so hopefully in the next 18 years, we can get him a desk and a phone and he can be the new generation of SCAISers. Zlatica Benova is our new Salaried Slovak interpreter who started in April She loves shopping, going out and talking. She s recently started her driving lessons so hopefully she ll be whizzing her way around South Yorkshire without having to catch the bus. Ben Lake has had a busy few months; first his wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Beth (pictured with her big brother Sam), in February and then left us to start his new job. We are going to miss him and his bike parts everywhere but wish him all the best with his young family and new job. 9