NWREN MEEA Language Report Exec Summary
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Transcript of NWREN MEEA Language Report Exec Summary
Promoting Equality · challenging discrimination · upholding human rights
Company No.: 5843319 Charity Registration No.: 1116970
The Minority Ethnic Elders Advocacy Project (MEEA)
Access to Statutory Services: from the perspective of both Minority Ethnic Elders and External Organisations
Summary report written and produced by NWREN as part of the MEEA Project
NWREN, February 2015, Belinda Gammon
A full, referenced, copy of this report is available on request, or from
www.nwren.org
MEEA Project Language Report
The report examines the perspective of minority ethnic elder groups, individuals and
statutory providers, within North Wales, on the importance and difficulties in the provision
of ‘own dialect interpreting services’.
The report is an initial step in a longitudinal study, with the aim of bringing together both
the perspectives of service providers and their MEE clients, exploring, with reference to
own dialect interpreting provision, the difference between the experience of MEE when
accessing statutory services and the intentions of providers delivering those services.
The sometimes rhetorical and fragmented debate on the importance of language and own
‘dialect translation services’ is historically and currently well documented in both academic
and ‘grey’ literature. The report is a contribution to better understanding and presents
clear empirical evidence of both need and service limitations and as such, the data are
intended to demonstrate need rather than elicited criticism. These findings are not
unique to North Wales, they correlate with findings across Britain. However, what may be
a unique asset to North Wales is the level of genuine engagement and co-operation
between the participating statutory and voluntary service providers.
The aims and objectives were to collate, formally, the incidence of poor access to own
dialect interpreting provision and to ascertain the impact on minority ethnic elders of the
difficulties encountered with comprehension and translation. The aim of this research is to
use the data to advocate and promote a better understanding of the translation needs of
minority ethnic elders with a view to informing future provision and policy decisions across
Wales.
The findings were divided into four factors: physical, psychological/emotional, financial
and practical. The experience amongst the service providers was that there is little
realisation, on the part of frontline service provision staff, in both Primary and Secondary
Care, that time, translation and outcome are conjoined. This lack of awareness is
universally documented across all statutory sectors in the North of Wales, with the service
providers reporting concerns that their commitment, at strategic level, to the provision of
interpreting services as a duty of care, is not fulfilled universally by frontline staff. In the
Health Care sector, beneficiaries provided anecdotal examples of how this manifests itself
at each of the three critical stages of progress through the healthcare system. For
example, point of entry – accessing support and assessment; receiving treatment or
support; and lastly, the transition from hospital/health-centre based support to home-
based support and/or maintenance of any new self-care routine.
The disparities between the findings and the activities of agencies (such as BCUHB and
others) are important data. The disjunction between the experience of our informants and
the intentions of the agencies is important. The data also illustrate the need for a single
protocol across agencies to encourage and empower service users to request appropriate
dialect interpretation services.
Promoting Equality · challenging discrimination · upholding human rights
The Equality Centre, Bangor Road, Penmaenmawr, Conwy, LL34 6LF Company No.:5843319 Charity Registration No.: 1116970