Season's Greetings and a look ahead to 2022 December 2021NRPSI is working for youDear Registrant, As the year draws to a close, our best wishes go out to you all. It has been another particularly challenging year for everyone. We would like to take a moment to recognise those Registrants whose lives have been directly impacted by the pandemic while they sought to serve the public. Our thoughts are with you and your families. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank NRPSI team members. They have worked tirelessly under very trying circumstances over the last 21 months, particularly in the last few weeks of December 2021 when the skeleton crew manning the office was affected by an outbreak of Covid-19 in the building. I apologise if you were caused any inconvenience by these challenges to our service and wish to thank everyone who has been so patient with the inevitable disruption caused to our activities by the pandemic. I would especially like to thank those who are still waiting for their new ID Cards owing to a manufacturing problem exacerbated by the current global situation for their patience. Please see the NRPSI letter explaining the delay in distributing new ID Cards that appears on the NRPSI website. And please rest assured that we will send your ID Cards to you as soon as we receive them. Looking ahead, we will re-open our office on 4 January and have a full agenda of activity for 2022. We will continue our dialogue with the police over the roll-out of the Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) and the foundations of the Police Approved Interpreter and Translator (PAIT) scheme. NRPSI will also take part in further high-profile lobbying activity aimed at encouraging positive changes in the way in which the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) handles public service interpreting. There are further meetings with the MoJ in the diary and NRPSI will not stop advocating increased professionalism in public sector language services delivery. Problems in the NHS caused by poor interpreting are becoming more noticeable and NRPSI will continue to campaign for improvements in the way in which non-English speaking communities are cared for. All being well, we plan to open the National Register of Public Service Translators (NRPST) to registrations in March 2022. As many of you know, we launched the NRPST website in December 2019 intending to accept registration applications in April 2020. Unfortunately, the first Covid-19 lockdown put pay to this plan and, due to the pressures over the last 21 months, we have not been able to begin this activity. If the situation does not worsen over the next few months, we will have the resources in place to handle registrations for NRPST shortly. We will, of course, keep you informed about developments. The next NRPSI ‘town hall’ Zoom call will be held on 27 January 2022 from 5pm onwards. In November, more than 50 Registrants got together for over two hours, and we believe it was a valuable time for all who took part. If you want to join this evening get-together with your fellow Registrants, please email mike@nrpsi.org.uk using the subject line ‘Next NRPSI Town Hall’. We will issue a call invitation on 25 January 2022. May we take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year and encourage you to stay distanced as much as possible during the New Year celebrations and for the foreseeable future to keep safe and well. Kind regards, Mike Orlov
|