Generally, there was some divergence of views between public service provides and civil society organisations on the availability of interpretation – the former were more likely to feel that it was unavailable by exception, while the latter experienced a broader lack of availability in practice. CSO3 commented: “… in terms of public services, not a lot of services provide interpreters for asylum seekers when they use it, especially health and education, and social services” (CSO 3). PB2 on the other hand emphasized the very large number of interpretations delivered in health and social care: “… we’re looking at a situation now where we have probably up to 150,000, 200,000 appointments covered per annum across a variety of languages, which again it’s not reflected in any of the reports I’ve ever ready anywhere” (PB2). PB2 said human error rather than systemic problems was more likely to be responsible for interpretation not being available: “Human error, anything that involves humans there will be human error… if you have an appointment and your interpreter doesn’t turn up I would always veer on the fact that their car has broken down as opposed to it being a case of systemic racism” (PB2). The accessibility of interpretation for GP services was the most commonly cited example of interpretation not being available. CSO3 said: “… sometimes they are not aware they have access to interpreting… They will try to get you to bring someone to translate for you or pay for your own, you know, or use your children to talk to your GPs” (CSO3). CSO4 noted “[I] guess it depends upon practice or really personnel, they say they can’t get interpreters for appointments, so when we ring up the interpreting service and say, ‘oh, is it true you don’t have any more Somali interpreters’, she’ll say, ‘absolutely not’…” (CSO4). CSO6 noted: “… a lot of it is around… vulnerable people not having access to the interpreter and they’re not being told in many cases that they have the right to, they’re just told, we don’t have an interpreter, sorry. So of course they don’t have either the confidence, nor the language in many cases, to be able to dispute that or to ask questions around it” (CSO6). CSO8 considered that there was significant variability in the availability of interpreting services: “Just because there’s some good examples of practice, doesn’t mean that you can ignore when it’s not done because then it’s a postcode lottery for people wherever they move to, well, they might get a good GP or they might not. And that’s not good enough, like, they need to be able to consistently go to a GP and get an interpreter to talk about their medical issues” (CSO8). Despite the fact that a lot of the examples of interpretation not being available related to the health and social care context, PB2 pointed out that in Northern Ireland “the only public service that has a dedicated interpreting service is health and social care” (PB2). PB3 commented on the fact that interpretation through thebigword (a telephone interpretation service) would not always be available : “… if you’re not guaranteed a face-to-face interpreter, we’re trying to use thebigword. And whilst that’s okay at times, it’s still not great. But I wasn’t even able to get an interpreter yesterday, which was really challenging. And the guy’s need was pretty urgent”
(PB3). CSO8 noted that – in terms of written documentation – the issue was wider than simply the availability of translation but had to do with communication that was not meeting people’s needs: “… it’s making sure that if you’re addressing some of those things, that it’s not just being done tokenistically… we want to make sure that it’s actually meeting the needs of the families and not just being done so that the service looks like it’s getting a wee bit of a tick in terms of increasing accessibility” (CSO8). CSO7 also raised the fact that some interpreters did not have equality training and were unsuitable for dealing with issues faced by LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers and refugees: “sometimes interpreters have their own baggage… We’ve had one with a solicitor not that long ago who [the interpreter] actually hung up, wouldn’t continue doing the interpreting because obviously they just weren’t comfortable with it” (CSO7). Other issues included interpreters consistently misgendering trans asylum seekers and refugees or simply not being aware of key terminology such as “non-binary”. The complexity of the public service landscape and the lack of information and advice W1 and W2 participants said that the complexity of the public service landscape created a significant barrier for asylum seekers and refugees. Navigating the system was very complex and asylum seekers and refugees needed more support and help to make sense of the system and their journey through it. PB3 noted: “ …understanding of our systems, and making appointments, for example with their GP, or responding to letters, and understanding, I suppose, our health and social care system. A lot of the families that we’re working with don’t understand what some of the professionals are” (PB3). However, the onus was placed on the individual, not the system, to arrange services so that delays in getting services arranged were inevitable. Asylum seekers and refugees often had questions about what rights they have but everything was up to the individual to decipher and understand. Complexity also arose from frequently changing processes and procedures and a lack of consistency, with different forms for the same things, and the same things called different things. CSO1 commented on the complexity of the public service landscape as follows: “… we have a very disconnected system here… We have got 11 councils, five health trusts, one education authority, one housing executive, geographical areas don’t match up for the council areas, the health trusts, and the regions that the housing executive are divided into. And it makes it a hard system to navigate if you’re from here, never mind if you have arrived here, and have to try and work through it” (CSO1). CSO8 agreed that the system would be complicated even for those born in Northern Ireland: “… we’ve worked in this job for years and there’s still some parts of systems that I don’t understand… I have English as my first language and I’ve lived in this country my whole life. So, considering that complexity for someone who doesn’t have those two privileges is just adding to the chaos” (CSO8).
28 | Access to Public Services and Access to Justice for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Northern Ireland
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