The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) started the national language services framework on 30 January 2012. As stated in the agreement the contract would be monitored by the MoJ and covers interpreting across HM Courts and Tribunals Service which covers England and Wales.
The first three month period finished on 30th April. The long awaited stats were released and published on the MoJ website on the 24th May.
The general stats reveal there were 26,059 requests in total for an interpreter. The MoJ (i.e. ALS) say that 11% of these requests were cancelled by the courts. Interpreters report that court staff were being pressurised by ALS staff to report a request as cancelled if they could not fulfil it.
Stats say that of the remaining bookings, 81% of bookings were filled. That leaves 8% unfilled plus whichever proportion of the bookings were falsely recorded as cancellations.
The contract stated there should be a 98% fill rate. The 8% equates to 2,085 bookings, further increased by ‘cancellations’ over the period of three months. This is a clear indication this contract is not working.
Let’s bear in mind the 98% contractual obligation and the fact some courts had given up by March and started to book interpreters directly and some just decided not book an interpreter at all. This started to happen in March for BSL as reported on this blog and recent reports suggest this practice continues. The MoJ had also entered not into a one stop shop but what ALS were starting to call a mixed economy. This is the reality of why the stats improved by month.
There is scant information in the summary report of BSL but none at all in the Excel spreadsheet of raw data. The report states that for courts ‘deaf and deafblind languages’ was the 18th most popular category with 241 completed requests. 190 of those were for BSL. For tribunals the summary reports states there were 163 requests, 127 of which were BSL making ‘deaf and deafblind languages’ the 16th most popular in this category.
As an aside the word ‘popular’ in the report conjures up images of people having a choice of what language they request. It is an inappropriate choice of words. ‘Deaf and deafblind languages’ is a clear misunderstanding of this category which includes lip speaking and as stated on page eight finger spelling. We have seen these kind of misunderstandings on the websites of spoken language agencies trying to break into the BSL market for years. One would think for such a large government contract that someone would have made sure they got it right. It is a clear demonstration of a company that does not understand the Deaf community and the access it requires.
Further, it is interesting to note the Excel spreadsheets have tables breaking down requests for the top 20 languages but though the report states BSL is in the top 20 for both courts and tribunals it does not feature in the tables.
We therefore have no data in either the spreadsheet or the report to say how many requests there were in total and how many could not be filled. The only figures available to us are how many bookings were filled which total 404 including lipspeakers and other ‘deaf languages’. The subcontractor (or preferred supplier) states on their website they filled 94% of the 610 received bookings making 573 bookings which does not match the MoJ’s published statistics. As with spoken language bookings not all bookings at the start of the contract were booked though the main supplier as the MoJ were honouring existing bookings for dates in advance which included bookings into February and March. Furthermore this indicates a shortfall of the 98% target using these figures.
In some ways the stats are exactly what everyone expected. They were not produced by the MoJ but the company who won the contract. There has been no independent monitoring and deliberate obfuscation. The British taxpayer does not know what our funds are being spent on and whether this contract is value for money. FOI requests to the MoJ by interpreters and other interested parties have been refused since the contract started. The MoJ has cited that the cost of centrally recording data was too prohibitive and therefore the FOI requests did not have to be fulfilled. People started to send FOI’s directly to courts to ask questions such as how many times had an interpreter not been provided and whether ‘no shows’ had occurred where an interpreter is promised and does not turn up. Questions are still not being answered. Letters and FOI requests get forwarded to MoJ central where the answer is that data collection is… too prohibitive.
In this report for BSL we have only a few sentences to guide us and no transparency as to how many bookings were unfilled. We have no breakdown within the category of ‘deaf and deafblind languages’ either by cancellation, adjournments, filled bookings or no shows.
The report does not give us any useful information. We are left with the knowledge that this company does not fully understand how to give Deaf people access to the courts, that real data is not being provided, that the MoJ is not monitoring the contract and Deaf access has been relegated to a small part of a very large, unsustainable and unsuccessful contract.
BSL
There are 37 posts tagged BSL (this is page 9 of 19).
Making a Profit: A Deaf Wage?
Although we have had a two-tier system of access for the Deaf community since the register of interpreters was started, this is getting worse in our current economic climate.
By two-tier I mean the use of registered interpreters and the continued use of the unregistered signer who has yet to acquire the National Occupational Standards in order to be able to register.
We have seen what are called CSWs (Communication Support Workers) in education for a number of years. Started to plug a gap when interpreters were low in number, they no longer are, the use of the CSWs has spun out of control with many believing they are up to the job of interpreting. Many aren’t.
The term CSW has become a way of trying to give the untrained and often not fluent signer some credence, some recognition for the job of filling the gap and an excuse for service providers to say they have made a reasonable adjustment under British Law.
How did CSWs who were deemed suitable for education in the 1980’s become a stop gap for other areas such as community bookings and employment (funded by the government through its Access to Work scheme)?
Even some agencies who state they only use reigstered interpreters use them in other areas. Two I know use them for office interpreting with Deaf staff and one uses them both for their education service and as employment consultants. Whichever way you couch it the work this personnel is doing is interpreting i.e. translating from Sign Language to English or English to Sign Language. As much as an agency can say it only uses registered interpreters, it does not if it only adheres to those standards for certain areas.
So why does this two-tier system exist? Mainly profit and a few myths in existence which now no longer apply:
There are not enough interpreters… We have more interpreters on the register than ever and some are struggling to find work.
Interpreters are expensive…
a) The truth is that many agencies are expensive with some charging 50% more than the fee an interpreter charges. When you use an agency for your Access to Work interpreting it is your budget that is being eaten away in fees to that middle man.
b) CSWs are cheaper and more flexible. Many are not and charge similar prices to interpreters. Someone told me recently of someone with level 2 earning £40k a year by their own admission. Not bad for a GCSE qualification and someone is paying them. That does not constitue value for money by anyone’s standards.
Using agencies for public service contracts will save money…
Many signers are working at community bookings, mostly at the hands of spoken language agencies (one previous example I
have quoted of a level 3 signer in court was a spoken language agency). Having been successful in winning a contract or even a sub-contract many agencies find their profit margin decreases so they must squeeze the fees of the interpreter. FOI requests show per booking the cost of providing a signer was no cheaper than a registered interpreter. The cost of having to book an interpreter, often to repair the damage a signer did, can be worse. Use a cowboy, you usually then have to spend more to fix it.
In this two-tier market there are agencies and CSWs who continue to make a living out of the Deaf community without care or concern for the potential damage they do or the reduction in choice for the Deaf client.
There has been a phrase that Deaf people have used to denote a living someone makes from the Deaf community by someone that gives nothing back. It has been said that the person is making a ‘Deaf wage’.
Regardless of whether your marketing suggests you give something back, if you or your business make a profit by supporting this two-tier system, I suggest you could be deemed as earning a Deaf wage.