Quarterly Reports to the NEC
Service Group : Professional Development
Report Author: Caron Hawkings
Date of report: February 2008
1. Current Membership of your group:
I currently have 2 e-groups supporting the work and one e-group for mentors (i.e. for
mentors and those going through training post workshop 2).
Mentoring working group: John Walker, Marco Nardi, Amanda Casson-Webb and
Zane Hema
Regional reps for training: One change to D&C region – now Clare Seal (previously
Carly Renaud)
2. Your Contact email: pdchair@asli.org.uk
3. Summary of recent Events including attendance:
The training e-group is becoming more active since the New Year – it is working well for
me to have regional reps in each area getting feedback from their members and asking
the questions that need to be asked. A lot of members are requesting training in the
week so we need to ensure that this happens – that we have a mix of weekend and
weekday courses – sometimes this is dependent on the trainers and their work
commitments but where possible we will facilitate according to regional requests. The
move towards more central administration of courses is starting to happen, whilst control
of what happens stays within the region.
It was disappointing to have to reorganise some of the training courses, but the feedback
has been positive – we are deferring the BSL Modification course due to run the
weekend immediately before conference, until October. 9 people were booked on the
course but we know more would sign up if the timing were better. I will be planning all
future events to avoid clashes (as much as possible) with ASLI events, school holidays
and religious festivals – no mean feat but we can do it.
Since my last report in November we have run 4 mentoring workshops – 2 in Belfast and
1 each in London and Sheffield (I am co-training on the Sheffield courses). One more
workshop on mentoring takes place in Sheffield on 23/24 February (the final of 3) and
we may have our first baby in training (Isla, care of Helen Tagg).
Child Protection takes place in London on 16/17 February – I am particularly excited
about this course as interpreters will be working. We have our first Deaf person
attending a non-mentoring training event (to my knowledge) who is an Intermediary. As
a result of our negotiations with ALS we also have two lipspeakers attending.
ALS ran a successful day on working in police settings with a visit to a station and
facilitated by a MPS officer – 2 ASLI members attended this event.
4. Summary of recent significant contacts, networking, meetings:
Bristol University Update: Rachel Sutton Spence has forwarded me information on the
Bristol modules which I will be including in the next NEWSLI and advertising on our web
site (as agreed)...I am waiting for a link to the relevant Bristol Uni pages so that
members will know where to go for more information. ASLI members will receive a £50
discount per module.
Mental Health: I attended the one-day conference in London as a delegate (i.e. not
representing ASLI) – Dean & Pollard are very engaging presenters and there is a lot of
interest in the 4-day course, which will be run under the umbrella of BSMHD. This
course will take place at the end of June 2008. ASLI’s involvement is to support Clare
Shard with course content decisions and Esther Thomas is supporting me with this work– largely to ensure it has a UK focus. I am also developing a course evaluation form,
which will enable me to plan training courses to ‘fill in the gaps’ – the mental health
course we had running with Julie Watkins and Dr Sara Rhys Jones has been deferred to
accommodate this evaluation.
ITI Office meeting held on 25 January – this was a great opportunity for me to review all our procedures and documentation with the office. We have had a number of ‘slip ups’ on the administration and I am hopeful that once the following is in place we can resolve these issues going forward. A number of changes will be made to our documents and procedures but the most important change is that we are changing booking terms. In future there will be an ‘Early Bird’ price on courses which will cut off 6 weeks before a course is due to run. Already in the few months since taking over ‘APDP’ I have realised how problematic it is to run things to such tight deadlines before we know if we have enough numbers or not. I will trial this method in the courses to run later this year and see how successful (or not) it is – we have to tighten up to avoid venue cancellation fees and upsets to plans for course participants and trainers – plus the additional strain this puts on administration. I am working on templates and flow charts to make information more accessible for all (hopefully all ready by end of April).
Wales/BSL Futures: I represented ASLI at a meeting in North Wales on 11 January. A report has been submitted to Ops...in summary there is ongoing work to develop interpreter training in Wales at HE level as a full-time 3-year course with end qualification mapped at MRSLI level. ASLI’s involvement will be to develop training for interpreter assessors to observe and sign off student observation sheets – these are early days and good to be in at the start of the development of a new programme which will enable interpreter training in Wales to be sustainable post BSL Futures.
Student Placements: I met with Sarah Bown (Wolverhampton) and Sarah Haynes
(Bristol) to discuss how working interpreters can support students on placement. We
agreed that as placements are now locally based to the relevant universities (students
go out during the week and not on block placements now) that more work needs to
happen within the ASLI regions concerned. The best way forward was agreed that
representatives from the universities should contact the regional chairs in question and
request time at a local meeting to promote placements. I will be contacting the
University of Middlesex to see if a similar idea can be followed through by them and at
the same time talking with CPD to see if this might warrant some points within the new
proposed scheme.
5. Meetings planned in the next 3 months:
Meeting with Clare Shard – to discuss Mental Health training programme content – 22
February in Sheffield.
Meeting with Frances Elton and Carol Foster to discuss a one-day event in CEA – 31
March in London.
6. Events planned in the next 3 months:
Interpreting in Police settings – 9/10 May 08 (Friday/Saturday)
Mentoring Workshop 3, London – 12/13 March 08
ASLI NEC Papers 1st March 2008 Page 8
ASLI NEC Papers 1st March 2008 Page 8
Mentoring Workshop 3, Belfast – 17/18 March 08
Academic Interpreting, Bristol – 17/18 March 08
7. Dates for the ASLI Calendar:
Professionalism and Coping Strategies, Margo Currie, Cardiff – 19 April 08.
BSL Modification – cancel 29/30 March and add to 11/12 October – venue tbc.
ASLI NEC Papers 1st March 2008 Page 9
May 2007 Report
Caron Hawkings, Chair Mentor Training Service Group
RNID
The RNID Mentors in training have started to submit their portfolios for assessment to Chereme. About half have been received with a second deadline agreed for July for the rest. Sandra Jones at RNID is currently assessing numbers for the next training programme, which will now start after October…hopefully there will be places available to delegates outside of RNID and I will be negotiating a fee with RNID dependent on numbers and use of their venue.
BSL Futures
Several people are currently submitting their evidence for assessment so we should see some Mentors in Wales very soon. Whilst the mentoring programme has not always been easy to manage there, we are starting to see the results of the hard work put in especially from Chereme and myself.
New Mentors
We have 8 new ASLI Trained Mentors:
Grace Peddie
Maureen Wood
Kirsten McCarthy
Linda Linnett
Ann McAllister
Evelyn Davenport
Catherine Argent-Rose
Clive Ellis
We are continuing to develop the programme as each cohort feeds back. Personally I am really pleased with the way the training is going and excited about the forthcoming year.
Midlands and NW/NE Regions
We have 7 participants keen to continue the training to become Mentors. Workshop 1 to be held in Sheffield on 23 & 24 June to attract Midlands and NE Regions. We will then set dates for Workshops 2 and 3 to bring together participants from across the regions.
Accounts/Admin
Mentoring has a surplus of just over £1k from 2006 – as agreed this will be ring-fenced for the mentoring project to ensure self-sufficiency of the scheme. I am also arranging a meeting with ITI to ensure mentoring admin can fall in line with APDP and just to meet everyone (especially important with my new role FROM JULY!).
MyASLI (Malaysian Association of Sign Language Interpreters)
Zane Hema and I co-presented/trained a group of about 15 interpreters (mixture of Deaf and hearing) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in February. Zane focussed on ethics and developing a Code along with a concept of etiquette and what is good i.e. how our ethical decisions are affected. I focussed on Community Interpreting and Mentoring (many thanks to John Walker for his help with the presentation). MFD (Malaysia Federation of the Deaf) have been given government funding to train 100 interpreters and MyASLI are struggling to meet this demand, specifically in setting up training and formal accreditation for interpreters. It was a fascinating insight into the start of a national process and I was very moved by the dedication of the lead individuals.
I am staying in touch with them and directing them to resources as and when requested. We were treated extremely well in terms of hospitality and were present at the official launch of their interpreter association and thus photographed many times! Zane represented WASLI and David Wolfenden, ASLI, at this event…we also met a Deaf man with Ushers who lives about 2 miles from our house and whom we have never met before!! Small world and enabled us to do some BSL interpreting whilst there.
WASLI
John Walker and I will be presenting at WASLI in July – a paper on ‘Mentoring – International Applications’. Should be an interesting piece of research.