Tommys and Sands Maternity Consortium exploring how interpreting services work in Maternity and neonatal care
From now until March 2025, the Maternity Consortium, fellow members of the VSCE Health and Wellbeing Alliance, will be exploring how interpreting services work in Maternity and Neonatal care, from both patients’ and healthcare professionals’ perspectives. They’re focusing on spoken interpreting and BSL (British Sign Language) interpreting in healthcare services; we are not addressing written translation in this project.
Their goal is to produce an insightful report with practical recommendations by early March. They’ll be consulting various stakeholders to understand the real experiences and challenges that people face, and a lot of those recommendations may open the door to deeper exploration down the line.
Here are some key areas they are looking into:
- Access for Women and Birthing People: What’s the current experience like for people accessing interpreting services in maternity care? What is it like when they are not offered interpreting services when they should? What would make it easier or more effective for them? National Maternity Voices are currently leading on this work.
- Healthcare Providers’ Challenges: Why aren’t healthcare providers routinely following guidance on interpreting? And what would make it easier for them to offer this support? We are especially interested in hearing from midwives, particularly those in smaller hospitals or community settings.
- Insights from Interpreters: We’ll be reaching out to both interpreting organizations and individual interpreters to understand their unique challenges and what would help them deliver better services in healthcare environments.
- Current Initiatives: There are already great initiatives working to improve access for birthing people with limited or no English. We want to learn from these efforts to see what’s working and where gaps still exist.
- Multiple disadvantages: People who need interpreting services often face multiple disadvantages (e.g. asylum seekers & refugees, survivors of violence), how do we make sure their interpreting and language needs are not looked at in isolation?
If you’re interested in contributing, learning more, or sharing insights, reach out to them [email protected]
