27 March 2014
As agreed at the October 2013 Board meeting, David Wolfenden, Gill Croft and Stuart Anderson were co-opted to the Board until mid 2014. On 24 February 2014 the Chair, announced the new appointments on the website.
The membership of the Board is now made up of
You can find further information about the new Board members on the website.
In our Summer Update we told you about changes to our policy on enhanced disclosure requirements.
We have had lengthy discussions with DBS and further legal advice. The outcome of this is that a communication professional working with deaf or deafblind people can be asked to provide an enhanced disclosure without a check of the adults barred list if they are:
A communication professional can be asked to provide an enhanced disclosure with a check of the adults barred list if they are working in regulated activity, such as health and social care or counselling.
We will publish further detailed information on DBS and relevant legislation on our website soon.
Options Appraisal
Following recent consultations, in particular the consultation workshop on 27 January 2014, the NRCPD Board considered contributions from stakeholders regarding the strengthening of registration. After discussing the feedback, the Board considered it right to pause the previous timetable to make sure it had identified and assessed all the options open to it.
The Board also recognised the need to continue improvements in communication with stakeholders so they fully understand the rationale for any proposed changes. Board Chair Huw Vaughan Thomas announced this on 14 March and said that in the coming months NRCPD will:
(a) complete its audit to measure organisational performance and practice against the standards required of a statutory regulator. This will identify what internal processes need to be strengthened in order to meet those standards. This will feed in to a detailed plan of action for strengthening registration; and
(b) continue to consult with service users, practitioners, purchasers and registrants in developing future plans.
The revisions to the NRCPD complaints procedure are nearly complete, so we are on schedule to consult with you about them in the month ahead.
We have also resumed our review of the code of conduct, which is a necessary component of the complaints procedure. Consultation on the code will follow discussions about the complaints procedure.
The first annual CPD audit is planned for April, covering the 2013 registration year. It will be conducted on a randomly generated 10% sample for each category of the register to include a balance of new and experienced registrants.
The audits will assess the quality of the CPD completed by the selected registrants. This will generate:
(a) developmental feedback for the process as a whole, leading to advice and guidance for following years; and
(b) guidance on what would happen if an audit revealed that the requirements had not been met, or a false declaration given.
We will incorporate the relevant feedback and guidance from the audit into the CPD Monitoring and Audit Policy. We will develop an associated CPD Handbook to guide registrants on acceptable CPD activities and required evidence.
Registrants asked to take part in the audit will need to provide their CPD file describing the learning activity and the relevance of this learning to their work. The file should contain evidence that they have undertaken the activity, such as appraisals, attendance or completion certificates.
We have incorporated some initial feedback into a draft policy which has been circulated to the Board and to the Practitioners' Forum for further comments and refinements. We will post updates on the website to keep you informed of progress.
At last November's Practitioners' Forum meeting we suggested that members of the Association of Notetaking Professionals define the role of notetakers and develop a set of standards against which further courses and training can be mapped and developed.
As this will take some time, as a short term measure we agreed to assess the Open College Network (OCN) notetaker qualification to see if NRCPD can accept it as a requirement for notetaker registration. In place of notetaker standards, we will benchmark the OCN notetaking qualification against the CACDP Level 3 Certificate for LSPs working with Deaf and Deafblind People (Notetaking).
We have contacted OCN to ask if we can assess their level 3 electronic notetaking qualification to determine if we can accept it for registration of notetakers. The OCN senior management team are currently considering our request. We will keep you informed of progress.
The numbers of registered communication professionals at 28 February 2013 and 28 February 2014 are:
| 28/02/13 | 28/02/14 | |
|---|---|---|
| Registered Sign Language Interpreters | 807 | 874 |
| Trainee Sign Language Interpreters | 256 | 245 |
| Registered Sign Language Translators | 8 | 11 |
| Registered Lipspeakers | 43 | 36 |
| Registered Speech to Text Reporters | 27 | 24 |
| Registered Electronic Notetakers | 11 | 11 |
| Registered Manual Notetakers | 12 | 12 |
| Registered Interpreters for Deafblind People | 16 | 16 |
| Total | 1,180 | 1,229 |
The total number registered has risen by 49, compared to this time last year. We would like to thank everyone for their support and recognition of the importance of professional registration.
If you would like to comment on any item in this update or raise any other matters relevant to NRCPD, please contact enquiries@nrcpd.org.uk.
