20 April 2022
It's only April and we have had a few milestones this year already. In January, we celebrated 40 years since CACDP established the first register of interpreters in 1982. It was an absolute pleasure to speak with Sister Maria McCready (RSLI), Jemina Napier (RSLI), Melinda Napier and Linda Richards as part of our celebrations. You can find out more about the celebrations here: www.nrcpd.org.uk/NRCPD-updates.php?article=264, www.nrcpd.org.uk/NRCPD-updates.php?article=262 and www.nrcpd.org.uk/NRCPD-updates.php?article=266
And just last month, we welcomed the UK's first ever fully qualified and registered Relay-Intralingual Interpreter to the NRCPD registers, the numbers of which we are delighted to say have reached a new high of over 1,700 NRCPD registered professionals nationally. We are looking forward to welcoming more Relay-Intralingual Interpreters to the registers. We have a Relay-Intralingual Interpreting practice assessment for qualified and registered Sign Language Translators on Tuesday 21st June 2022. All spaces for that date have now been filled, but please get in touch if you would like to complete the practice assessment and we will arrange for another assessment to take place on a different date. The assessment for the Speech to Text Reporter endorsement as part of the Lottery funded uplift of registered STTRs will take place over the weekend of 23rd - 24th April 2022. but entries to this programme are now closed.
Work continues on developing professional practice and ethical guidance to assist registrants and regulated trainees in maintaining the standards of practice. The first pieces of work are on Regulated Trainee practise standards and improvements to the role of endorsing supervisors. Details on consultation for these will be published at a later date. Other work in this project includes developing guidance to professionals on Safeguarding, Health and Safety, Equality and Inclusion, amongst others.
In other news, we have recruited additional staff to the NRCPD team to reflect the growing scope of our work. We recently appointed Sarah Gray as our Professional Conduct and Complaints Manager and Dimple Randhawa as our Case Administration Assistant. Amy Yeardley also joined the team as our new Registration Assistant. You can find out more about Sarah, Dimple and Amy here: www.nrcpd.org.uk/staff-members. If you or someone you know is interested in working for NRCPD, please get in touch for an initial discussion. Even if we don't have current vacancies, we can record your interest for future reference.
Deaf comedian John Smith also joined NRCPD as our Ambassador. We are thrilled to have John on board and look forward to working with him over the coming months. You can find out more about his appointment here: www.nrcpd.org.uk/NRCPD-updates.php?article=276. Our Trustees also visited our office in Durham for the first time in March and we updated them on our crucial regulatory work in protecting the public.
In recent months, we have been working with eight other charities and organisations in the Deaf sector to promote a British Sign Language Bill, We attended both of the London rallies in January and March to support it as it progressed through the House of Commons. This Bill is now due its Third Reading in the House of Lords on April 27th, which if passed, will then receive Royal Assent at a later date. We will continue to actively support the Bill as it progresses and intend to be fully engaged with government in future work under the Act, assuming that remaining parliamentary hurdles are overcome.
We also attended the London screening of CODA and it was fantastic to meet representatives from City Lit, Signature, iBSL and Deaf Rainbow UK. The screening also gave us a rare opportunity to meet Deaf American actor Troy Kotsur who recently won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in CODA.
We had our first outreach event of the year this month and presented at Leeds Society for Deaf and Blind People. We are also attending Deaf Day 2022 at City Lit on Saturday 23rd April. We are looking forward to meeting everyone on the day! If you would like NRCPD to present in your local community, please get in touch.
If you have any questions about the above, please get in touch with us at: enquiries@nrcpd.org.uk.
With many thanks,
NRCPD.
Manchester Centre for Deaf Studies is running a course leading to the Signature Level 3 Certificate in Lipspeaking in Stoke-on-Trent. It will run on Zoom for approximately 13 months. Attendance will be roughly one weekend per month with at least two in-person sessions in Stoke-on-Trent. For more information about this course, please email Manchester Centre for Deaf Studies at: enquiries@manchesterdeafstudies.org
For more information about Lipspeaking, please see: www.lipspeaking.co.uk and lipspeakingwithsign.co.uk.
On the NRCPD Registers as of the end of March 2022, we have:
Registered Sign Language Interpreters: 1351
Regulated Trainee Sign Language Interpreters: 271
Registered Sign Language Translators: 27
Regulated Trainee Sign Language Translators: 16
Lipspeakers: 49
Speech to Text Reporters: 30
Electronic Notetakers: 8
Manual Notetakers: 3
Interpreters for Deafblind People: 13
