In your own words: Better practice in commissioning and using interpreting and translation services in health and social care

*Twitter users! Please use the hashtag #ref_ITS for your conference tweets!*

This free learning event was organised in partnership by the Race Equality Foundation, Sunderland City Council, Mothertongue, Everyday Language Solutions and the Department of Health to consider the importance of interpretation and translation services (ITS).  It sought to address a number of questions including:

• How can we best ensure quality assurance for ITS services in health and social care? 
• What is the need?
• What will happen if nothing changes?
• How can we improve commissioning of ITS services? 
• Are ITS cost-effective?
• How do ITS improve the patient experience? 
• How can we achieve equality of care for communities in need in rural and urban England?

View photos

Event documents

• Agenda (51.5kb Word file)
• Presentation summaries and speaker biographies (349kb PDF file)
• Learning resources (48kb Word file)
• ITS workshops (43kb Word file)

Presentation Slides

• The need for and provision of interpreting services in primary care
  Dr Paramjit Gill, GP  and Reader in Primary Care, University of Birmingham
• Commissioning and procurement: Interpretation and translating services at Nottingham University Hospitals (156kb PDF file)
  Renata Towlson, Senior Procurement Officer, University of Nottingham Hospitals Trust
• Commissioning face to face language lnterpreting services (181kb PDF file)
  Wendy Lillie, Director, Everyday language Solutions
• Interpreting in mental health context:  What’s so different? (193kb PDF file)
  Beverley Costa, Director, Mothertongue

Workshop slides

• Workshop 2: Breaking through the language barrier in health care: Meeting the patients’ communication needs (800kb PDF file)
  Claire Musgrove and Stephanie Smith, Sunderland City Council
• Workshop 4: Interpreting in a mental health context (109kb PDF file)
  Beverley Costa, Mothertongue
• Workshop 5: Interpreting and translation services in the context of information and access (363kb PDF file)
  David Knight,  Department of Health

For contact information for Professor Rachel Tribe, or information on workshop 1 (Wendy Lillie:  Cost-effectiveness) and Workshop 3 (Language Line team: Quality Assurance and the private sector), please contact Farah Islam-Barrett.

To find out more about our work on ITS, please visit the Strategic Partners project pages.