SA-UK network for enhancing sign langauge interpreting in statutory health and social care.

This proposed network is focussed on the estimated 400,000 Deaf users of South African Sign Language (SASL) who rely on interpreting services to access health and social work services. Specifically, it focusses on the most serious circumstances when this might be required such at times of severe mental distress when the law permits assessment leading potentially to involuntary detention in psychiatric care or child protection investigations when parental rights are overtaken by the state and a child is removed. These high stakes situations are fundamentally dependent on effective communication yet effective support and guidance for health/social work professionals and SASL interpreters is not available. The situation is highly complex given the vast language diversity of SA with most interpreters being multilinguals for whom neither the dominant spoken language nor the signed language are likely to be first languages. This project will map the field in real life, not theory. It will bring together practitioners, Deaf people, interpreter trainers and academics to produce policy relevant evidence briefings and research papers that form the foundation for a later large-scale project as well as deliver immediate resources to enhance professional practice. Through improving the working practices of practice professionals in the most seriously consequential interpreter mediated situations we are laying the foundations for improving practice across all healthcare access, reducing inequities of process and outcome for Deaf citizens and building the skills of the nascent SASL interpreting profession to the benefit of the quality of life all Deaf people in SA.