Booking a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter

Booking a British Sign Language (BSL) Interpreter

Anybody who has ever had to provide British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters will have noticed how difficult it is to have a large bank of interpreters to draw from, and yet still fulfil all of the bookings you receive.

As there are so few qualified British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters available in this country, there will always be a number of bookings that cannot be met. The trick is to be able to fulfil all of these bookings, whilst still giving your entire bank of interpreters enough regular work to keep them busy and involved.

This is indeed a balancing act.

How to solve this problem?

Asking for a longer lead time from our clients in order to guarantee bookings will help to solve this problem. All British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters like to have their diaries filled up for months ahead, and advance booking would give us more chance of assigning the interpreter.

So if you are a Local authority, an NHS Trust, or another type of organisation that needs to book British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters, please do try and give as much notice as possible.
Ideally 2-3 weeks would be the optimum advance notice in order to guarantee a booking.

In the real world though, we know that this cannot always be the case.
So for emergency bookings or short notice requests, we will always pull out all the stops and do what we can to ensure that the deaf client has the necessary representation.

Visit our website www.silent-sounds.co.uk for more information on working with British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters.