Mariella Reina qualified as a BSL interpreter in 2008. She feels strongly about the need for the interpreting profession to always demonstrate integrity, and to be united in pulling together to effect positive change.
Mariella holds the NUBSLI role of joint Equalities Officer (along with colleague Brett Best).
In the other part of life she likes long walks, time with family/friends, listening to Radio 4, films, art exhibitions, attending a tap dance class and dabbling with learning Italian and Spanish.
A Union and a Professional Association support you and your profession in different ways.
The focus of a Professional Association is aimed more generally at offering a supportive environment to its members and maintaining the standards within the BSL interpreting profession:
An example, of this would be:
• To encourage good practice in sign language interpreting.
• To work in collaboration with other organisations within the field, to benefit the profession as a whole.
Professional Associations will work to establish best practice, networking and CPD opportunities, to name but a few. In addition, they often do a lot of work representing members and the profession, meeting and advising external organisations. Your Professional Association is valuable to support you in maintaining and enhancing your practice.
The focus of a Union is that of workers’ rights: safeguarding the profession and individual members from threats to erode fair and appropriate working conditions.
A Union’s key aims are:
• Representing the workers’ interests and protecting their rights (e.g., job security, standards of working conditions, quality of life etc).
• Establishing effective relationships with key influencers including Government.
• Fighting for fairness.
With a good strong membership the National Union of British Sign Language Interpreters (NUBSLI) will provide the opportunity for the BSL interpreting profession to have a powerful collective voice, to be recognised and heard in negotiations. With the backing of legal advice, support and representation from Unite, NUBSLI can campaign and galvanise organised action if necessary.
NUBSLI, your Union, has more strength as a lobbying and negotiating entity. As a branch of Unite, the largest Union in the UK, it has the backing of an organisation with a long history of successfully getting the Government to sit up and pay attention.
The two types of organisation have distinct and valuable areas of focus and different capabilities, so a decision to chose one over the other might jeopardise the sustainability of the BSL interpreting profession. Join NUBSLI today and be part of that collective.
NRCPD Statutory Regulation Survey
The NRCPD have sent out a survey to communication professionals to assess their thoughts on statutory regulation. The deadline is Friday 11th July.
My answers are below. If anyone has any comments please post in response:
1. Do you support the NRCPD aim of statutory regulation? Yes
I support the aim of statutory regulation. I am not convinced the NRCPD are the right body to hold this as it is still not independent from Signature/CACDP and I haven’t been happy with the way UKCoD have dealt with the AtW enquiry and how interpreters have not been involved as much as they should have been.
2. Do you think requiring registrants to agree to a code of conduct is a good thing? No
The Code of Conduct is too prescriptive and does not allow for the breadth of ethical decision making that a BSL interpreter has to practice every day. The Code of Ethics was much better and reflective of other professions. A teological approach to ethics rather than deontological would be much more suited in the case of interpreters. This is a much more up to date way of thinking in the interpreting profession (see Dean and Pollard’s Demand Control schema).
3. Do you think requiring registrants to continue their professional development is a good thing? Yes
I agree with CPD but do not agree with the way that NRCPD have mandated that some hours should be structured but also limited to only courses about interpreting. This has created a market for CPD courses but not increased the value of CPD to practitioners of more than five years post qualification. For example I would like to attend courses on voice production, mime and another language. I believe these would all enhance my work as a practitioner but none of these courses would fit the NRCPD’s criteria. I have completed most of the courses that are on offer in the market and am struggling to find anything that would enhance my professional development.
The rather arbitrary numbers allocated to structured and unstructured do not make sense and were not created in consultation with interpreters.
The more experience one has the more unstructured CPD is completed rather than structured: peer supervision groups, clinical supervision, evaluating ones work, attending or facilitating interpreter meetings, volunteering for interpreter organisations, reading research and articles.
I also do a number of hours of voluntary interpreting which I often record and evaluate.
I would recommend that NRCPD readjust the hours of structured and unstructured or rather put the total amount of hours an interpreter should complete without being prescriptive.
I would recommend that NRCPD allows courses indirectly related to interpreting to be counted as CPD.
I would recommend that NRCPD consult interpreters when reviewing CPD.
4. Are you willing to meet with members of the NRCPD Board to discuss statutory regulation, continuing professional development and the code of conduct’ if the opportunity arises? Yes
Further comments:
The NRCPD should consider asking TSLIs to take an ASLI trained mentor and provide funding to ASLI to provide this. Currently any RSLI can support a TSLI and they would not necessarily have the skills to offer that support.
Before any statutory regulation takes place Signature should be completed independent from NRCPD.
The alternative would be that another body holds the power to regulate.
When representations about interpreters are made to government the NRCPD should be representing the interests of interpreters as well as Deaf people rather than the view of Signature or UKCoD. This represents a direct conflict of interests and independence is paramount