NHS England: Translation and interpreting services survey (deadline 6 September 2024)

Summary

NHS England welcome your views and experiences of translation and interpreting services.

The survey is aimed towards organisational and professional stakeholders in translation and interpreting services working in healthcare (for example, in Trusts, Primary Care or ICBs).

Note that there is a separate process for engaging with patients and service users and bringing in lived experience, including suppliers of translation and interpreting services. NHS England are also linking in with the Royal Colleges for a clinical insight into this work.

The survey should take no longer than 20 minutes to complete and the deadline for submissions is Friday 6 September 2024.

Please note that the survey is best viewed in Google chrome or Microsoft Edge.

Content

In 2023 NHS England undertook a scoping exercise to understand what the most appropriate national interventions are to enable equitable and improved experience for patients needing access to translation and interpreting (CLT&I) services.

A number of themes emerged from that work. They include:

• A variation across systems in pricing costs and models.
• A variation in the way that different health and care organisations capture patients’ language needs.
• A lack of consistency in the training needs required by interpreters and translators working in health and care organisations.

There is not a consistent approach to monitoring the quality and performance of translation and interpreting suppliers.

NHS South, Central and West CSU (SCW) is leading on the engagement to develop an Improvement Framework following this scoping exercise. NHS England are keen for your views and experiences of translation and interpreting services to support us towards this improvement journey and to enable stronger partnership working and the development of system-based approaches.