Making the service is fully accessible to non-English speakers

It’s vital that the service is accessible to clients who do not have good English language skills. The following are some suggestions for how this may be achieved:

• Providing translations of referral and other information in EU languages. 

• Developing links with interpreters/interpreting services to assist with assessments and communications with services in EU countries.

• Employing EU nationals as volunteers or as members of the team.

As well as facilitating contact with family and services in the home country, the greater cultural understanding of attitudes towards work, family and other issues that staff from EU countries will have is likely to improve levels of trust between staff and clients.     

Remember, it’s unlikely that you will need to employ staff/utilise interpreters who speak all EU languages. There is sufficient commonality between some languages, eg: Polish/Czech for a speaker of one language to be themselves understood in the other in simple conversations. In addition, Russian is still widely understood as a second language, especially amongst older people.