FOI 2025/1325

You have recently Conducted a review entitled “NHS Interpretation and Translation Services Review” at https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.https%2F%2Fgetinvolved.gmintegratedcare.org.uk%2Fen-GB%2Fprojects%2Fnhs-interpretation-and-translation-services-review-voluntary-sector-input&data=05%7C02%7Cnhsgm.foi%40nhs.net%7C216c000ebcc6446b180308ddd57bba0b%7C37c354b285b047f5b22207b48d774ee3%7C0%7C0%7C638901449579380460%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=ELWTDqVKwRP9CMEjoslub4VUUgdWmZd3vF%2FvO5FByaM%3D&reserved=0
Your Consultation ran from 30th June – 20th July 2025 I note that this page references 3 + 5 Participants. I request the following Information for the period 1st July 2024 – 30th June 2025

1: How many “Requests” were made for interpreting & Translation Services?
1.1 How many of these “Requests” were fulfilled and became ACTUAL Interpreting and Translation Assignments?
– Preferably broken down by Language type.
– Preferably referencing face-to-face or remote
NOTE: For clarity How many Requests were made, How many of those request were provided with a Language Service Professional (LSP), referencing in person and remote appointment where the LSP was physically present “in the room” or where they were “remotely” e.g. via video or over the phone.
1.2 How many Complaints were received about Interpretation and translation services
1.3 How many reports or anecdotal comment were logged by NHS GM (Via a computerised system or through one of its Engagement officers or events.
NOTE: For Clarity I’m wanting to ascertain the number of either “on the record” or “off the record” comments, complaints or concerns raised about Interpreting and Translation Services.
2 Equality Impact Assessment:
2.1 Can you provide a copy of the Equality Impact Assessment for this engagement activity
NOTE: For clarity I’d like to know what steps were taken to include
– The former Accessible Information Standard – DCB1605
– Section 149 of the Public Service Equality Duty under the Equality Act 2010
– 1B and 1C of the NHS Act 2006
– 14Z31, 14Z32, 14Z33, 14Z34, 14Z35, 14Z38, 14Z39, 14Z42, 14Z45, 14Z53, 14Z54, of the NHS Act 2006
– The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007
3: During the Consultation period:
3.1 What were the specific aims identified for the consultation?
3.2 Were any key stakeholders identified? How was this done? Who were the key organisations?
3.3 What publicity did NHS Greater Manchester produce?
3.4 What languages were used?
3.5 Can you provide copies of Communications, links to publicity, Audio/Video links.
3.6 Which VCFSE organisations were consulted by the engagement/Comms team?
4: Consultation Responses
4.1 How many total Responses were received to the consultation?
4.2 What languages are represented by the consultation responses?
4.3 Does NHS Greater Manchester think the number and quality of responses are enough to move to the next stage?
5: The next steps
5.1 What are the next steps for the consultation?

1.& 1.1 NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM) consists of the following 10 Greater Manchester Localities: Bolton, Bury, Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, Manchester, Oldham, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan (former Clinical Commissioning Groups), who currently all have their own commissioning arrangements in place.
As such, not all localities hold information about the number of requests made and those fulfilled, furthermore, where the information is held by a locality this is recorded to suit the systems and processes adopted in that locality, and is therefore not available consistently across all localities.
As described above, information is not held in a consistent structured format to allow NHS GM to extract a complete data set. However, please find below the number of requests were fulfilled by locality, where this is available and a list of the language types.

**An excel sheet was sent to the requester with this response.  If you require a copy of the full response, together with the excel sheet, please contact NHS GM’s FOI team – nhsgm.foi@nhs.net.**

1.2 Between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025, <5 patient complaints were received by NHS GM in which concerns were raised about interpretation and translation services.
Additionally, 1 MP enquiry and 6 PALS enquiries (general enquiries) were received involving interpretation and translation services.
1.3 NHS GM does not log individual anecdotal comments made about services in our public engagement work.

2. Equality Impact Assessment:
2.1

**PDF documents were sent to the requester with this response, however we are unable to upload these onto our disclosure log.  If you require a copy of the full response, together with all of the the attachments, please contact NHS GM’s FOI team – nhsgm.foi@nhs.net.**

Please see attached copy of the EIA for the I&T project and its associated communications and engagement plan.

3. During the Consultation period:
3.1 Please refer to the EIA and Communications and Engagement Plan in the response to question 2.1.
To clarify, this project was engagement and not consultation and ran from 1 April-18 July 2025. NHS Greater Manchester were seeking feedback on the existing services to gain insight which will help them understand where interpreting and translation services are working well and where improvements are needed. This included translation and interpretation for community languages other than English and British Sign Language (BSL) for Deaf communities.
3.2 Please refer to the Communications and Engagement Plan in the response to question 2.1. There will be a report being produced over the coming weeks which will provide further detail and will be published in due course.
3.3 This engagement opportunity was communicated directly by contacting relevant forums, community groups, stakeholders etc.
The engagement team spoke directly to voluntary, community, social enterprise and faith establishments (VCSFE) who support people to understand their experiences of interpretation and translation needs for their service users.
NHS GM communications teams promoted this project on social media throughout the engagement period. They did 10 posts across NHS GM social media channels (5 on Facebook and 5 on Instagram. One on each platform in Arabic, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Urdu. In summary:
• Facebook and Instagram are the channels NHS GM use to reach members of the public which is why the social media activity was focused there
• The social media posts were shown on people’s screens or devices 1,155 times and were seen 966 times by different people (reach)
• The biggest reach was on Facebook (760). The posts were broadly similar in terms of reach, with the Portuguese post performing slightly better than the others on both Facebook and Instagram
• The average engagement rate was 4.5% which is considered above industry average.

3.4. They did 10 posts across NHS GM social media channels (5 on Facebook and 5 on Instagram. One on each platform in Arabic, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Urdu. The web survey was also translatable into 10 languages: Arabic, Urdu, Polish, Punjabi, Bengali, Somalian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Chinese (Mandarin).
3.5 Please see example screenshots of the social media posts below. Please note that the text defaults to the user’s language, but you can see the language from the text within the image.

**An image was sent to the requester with this response, however we are unable to upload these onto our disclosure log.  If you require a copy of the full response, together with all of the the attachments, please contact NHS GM’s FOI team – nhsgm.foi@nhs.net.**

3.6 The list of successful engagement opportunities is as follows:
• Trafford Deaf Network
• Yemmini Centre
• Silent Voices
• Coldhurst Centre
• Werneth Centre
• Tameside Adult Safeguarding Board Event
• Kashmir Youth Project
• Salford Deaf Gathering
• SAWN (Support and Action for Women’s Network)
• Bolton Deaf society
• Oldham Engagement and Insight Network
• Bury Deaf Network
• Healthwatch health fair Engagement Stall
• Number One Riverside Public Engagement Stall
• Oldham Integrated Care Centre Public Engagement Stall
• Debutterfly CIC
• BRASS (Befriending Refugees and Asylum Seekers)
• Bury Deaf Club
• SWAP (Support for Wigan Arrivals Project)
• Stockport Deaf Club

4. Consultation Responses:
4.1 NHS GM engaged with 418 people over 22 different engagement opportunities. This included attending ESOL classes, 1 on 1 interviews, stalls in public locations, presentations and focus groups. We reached people from across all 10 GM localities, who spoke 27 different community languages, plus BSL. 117 people were Deaf BSL users and 8 were professionals including BSL interpreters and Deaf support workers. In addition, 179 responses were received via an online survey from primary care staff and interpreters
4.2 People we spoke to in the engagement exercise told us they used the following languages:
• Afghani
• Amharic
• Arabic
• Aramaic
• Bengali (Bangla)
• British Sign Language (BSL)
• Czech
• Dutch
• Farsi (Persian)
• French
• Hungarian
• Igbo
• Indonesian
• Italian
4.3 A view will be taken on this by the NHSGM I&T Project Group for Primary Care, once it receives the engagement report. However, a significant amount of invaluable feedback / responses have been received from our in-person forums which, once the report has been finalised, will feed into the NHS GM I&T Framework of Requirements document and will support the newly released actions from the national Community Languages Translation and Interpreting Services framework (2025).