Dear Members,
It’s been a busy few months for us and an even busier time coming up, with our AGM coming up in Dublin on the 19 May. We hope to see you all there! Remember that motions and nominations for our two Committee positions should be in to us three weeks before this, i.e. prior to 28 April. It’s been a while since our last Member Update, and we have not been able to hold a Member Meeting in April due to circumstances beyond our control – we would like to apologise for this.
At present we have 14 Active members, 3 Associate Members, and 5 Student members. We would urge that members who have not renewed their membership do so. Membership forms are available on our Facebook page, or here: http://www.box.com/s/hhrkykcvti6vpdsn7o4j – and forms are to be sent to Darren Byrne, CISLI Treasurer, 40 La Touche Drive, Bluebell, Dublin 12.
We have continued to make representations to stakeholders and other interested parties. Darren Byrne has been busy attending meetings of the HSE / SLIS Subgroup as well as attending meetings with other ex-Irish Sign Link directors in relation to the use of leftover Irish Sign Link funds both are still ongoing. Chairperson Caroline O’Leary has presented to the ISL Academy on 18 February, and Cormac Leonard presented to a group of CDS students on the 17 January, gaining five new Student members. We are also looking forward to presenting to the Irish Deaf Society’s National Council meeting on 21 April in Mallow, Co Cork.
CISLI’s treasurer Darren Byrne has been working hard to arrange an indemnity insurance package for CISLI members. This is in conjunction with O’Brien Finlay Insurance brokers who have been able to arrange a package for €100 per year per person. This rate is exclusive to CISLI members, and offers indemnity cover, malpractice and public liability insurance with total cover of up to €6,500,000. More on this at our AGM. We’ve also been checking out the status of interpreters working through the three national sign language interpreter agencies in regards to indemnity, and again will be able to report back at the AGM on this.
We are still working on a video remote interpreting seminar, and will be devoting an hour at our AGM to this topic. To enable us to gauge member concerns and priorities in relation to this issue, we will be preparing a short e-survey for members to complete – you should receive this in a week or so. We are also happy to report that final results from our Member Survey will be available and distributed at the AGM – thanks to all members who took the time to participate!
In some regional news, we are delighted to report that the group of interpreters in Cork, working in conjunction with the Cork Deaf Association and Cork Deaf Club, have recently worked together to secure the use of qualified interpreters in a major hospital in Cork. We would like to offer our congratulations on this, and our support to any other regional initiatives to increase access to quality interpretation around the country.
The CISLI Committee have been working on a Communications Policy to determine proper procedures to be followed when communicating within the Committee, and between the Committee and membership / the outside world. This Policy is being finalised and will be presented to the membership at the AGM. We are delighted to announce that we will have a new website up and running in the next few weeks, with a view to unveiling it at the next AGM. At the moment we are also on the way to joining international interpreter organisations EFSLI and WASLI, and also looking into organisations ASLI and SASLI with regard to Associate membership of sister organisations.
We hope to organise meetings soon with the Centre for Deaf Studies, regarding their upcoming Justisigns / Medisigns projects, to clarify the relationship between CDS, CISLI and the IDS regarding future projects such as these. The meeting will also discuss the establishment and initiation of the BEI, with a view to having the CDS on board as a crucial stakeholder in this process from the outset. Another meeting will hopefully happen soon between CISLI, the IDS and SLIS, to discuss the SLIS Strategic Plan and possible overlaps in this Plan with other Deaf-related organisations. More on these developments soon.
That’s all for now – see you at the AGM in Dublin!
Regards
Committee
Council of Irish Sign Language Interpreters
Council of Irish Sign Language Interpreters 