Category: Member Update

Hello again, 
Another exciting announcement (two in one day!!!) CISLI will be holding a General Meeting on Thursday 8th April from 6pm-7.30pm.
This meeting is open to ALL of our members and will be an opportunity for CISLI to share some updates on the work that has been going on. This meeting will also give you a chance to raise any issues, questions, concerns or ideas with the committee. 
As a BONUS TREAT there will be a CISLI Social (woohoo) after the meeting so make sure to stay on and not miss out on any of the fun! 
This will all be happening through the magic of Zoom, if you’re a member of CISLI, contact the committee for the details. 

Hello lovely members! 
Hope you are all having a great weekend and enjoying some little rays of sunshine. 
CISLI are VERY excited to announce a brand new event “The CISLI Social Life!” hosted by our wonderful Member Care Liaison Person, Sarah Garvey. on Thursday 25th March at 7pm. 
This event is open to all members, particularly any new recruits who may not have had the opportunity to meet many other members just yet. This will be a chance to chat, catch up and create CISLI bonds to last a lifetime! We would love to know how CISLI can continue to support our members not just to be interpreting extraordinaires but to build up those very important social connections. 

If that wasn’t enough we also have a BRAND NEW email address as a DIRECT LINE to the member care liaison person, Sarah! If you have any questions, queries, comments or concerns around any member care matters make sure to get in touch.
So clear your calendars, get the kettle on and zoom on in! 

Contact CISLI for the zoom details – thanks!

Hello all,

A belated Happy New Year from the CISLI Committee! Spring is already with us,and we are still recovering from the whirlwind of the Irish Sign Language Act 2017’s passing in December.

It was an extremely busy – but massively productive – year for the Council. We face the year not just with a strong new piece of legislation to assist Deaf people and interpreters, but with several new developments in place for CISLI to begin – and continue – work on. CISLI are very proud of our involvement in the legislative process leading to the ISL Act. We have fought tirelessly for standards and fair treatment for interpreters, and while the new Act is by no means perfect, it puts us in a position we dared not dream of a few years ago. Again, we must congratulate the Irish Deaf Society for their steadfast work on this legislation, and particularly Dr John Bosco Conama and Lianne Quigley, as well as Senator Mark Daly of course.

Thanks to the Act – and the insistence of CISLI and the IDS on this point – we will soon have a new Register of interpreters, to be held by SLIS, that all interpreters working in public bodies must be a member of. We welcome the Register as a much needed first step; CISLI will strive in the short- to medium-term for a fair, transparent and universal system of assessment-based registration in domains such as legal, medical, mental health, etc., where assessment will focus on both practical interpreting skills, and theoretical and systemic knowledge. We will seek to have these elements introduced to the Register as soon as they can be formulated and agreed. CISLI intend to consult intensively with SLIS, IDS, the Centre for Deaf Studies and other stakeholders to ensure that the Register represents a true step forward in terms of quality assurance.

Our Sub-Committee structure continues to grow and develop. Most recently our Training Sub-Committee planned and delivered a wonderful day’s training with Dr Christopher Stone on “Interpreting in Systems”, held in Limerick. Attendance was perhaps the highest we have had for a training event in years, and the evening meal and social night ensured that much-needed conversations on the profession continued well into the night! Thanks to our wonderful Sub-Committee for this.

Our Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Sub-Committee have developed a working CISLI Occupational Health and Safety Policy for the organisation. It is of critical importance that in 2018, when we expect demand for interpretation to increase hugely, that vital standards and principles relating to health and safety are respected and followed. We will soon be contacting all interpreting agencies in the country to remind them of both the new Irish Sign Language Act, but also of the consequent need to ensure that practitioners are treated with respect and in such a way as to encourage and support them to remain in the profession.

Our Policy and Strategy Sub-Committee, established last year, has begun a hugely important project: to develop a  CISLI Strategy 2019-2022, an important document that will set out our core beliefs, aims and objectives for the short and medium term. We have already heard much to influence the Strategy at our recent General Meeting in Limerick, ‘Beyond the Pale’, in October. Our upcoming General Meeting in Dublin, on 6th and 7th April, will give members an opportunity to feed into the process of drawing up this Strategy, which will be approved by the main CISLI Committee and voted on – and hopefully adopted – at our next AGM in the summertime.

In other Sub-Committee news, we are delighted to announce that we have a new Deaf Interpreter Sub-Committee within CISLI. Teresa Lynch, Noel O’Connell, Susan O’Callaghan and our vice-Chairperson Frankie Berry, have taken on the task of developing this hugely important and rapidly growing aspect of our profession. We look forward to working with them.

We are delighted to announce also that we have a full CISLI Committee at present – with Irish Deaf Society representatives, Wendy Murray and Elaine Grehan, having joined us as colleagues.

Internationally, CISLI’s contacts and reputation are growing stronger. A CISLI delegation attended the EFSLI AGM and ‘What’s Up, Doc?’ conference in September 2017. A video and report can be found here. We intend to make sure that CISLI will be present at as many international conferences and get togethers as funds and time will allow! And getting down to the practical nuts and bolts of things – we have now made it easier to join the organisation, with a new PayPal feature for both membership (of all categories) and once-off training events!

It’s been a brilliant year for CISLI, but unfortunately our Chairperson, Cormac Leonard, will be stepping down at our next AGM in the summer, due to pressing commitments with his PhD studies. So, we’re planting the seed in your minds now – is anyone out there who’d like to take on the challenge of leading the organisation into 2019 and beyond? We will also have a vacancy for a new Treasurer at the same AGM, as Pauline McMahon is also stepping down. Please let us know if you are interested in either of these positions.

All the best for 2018, and speak to you soon,

Regards

_____________
Committee
Council of Sign Language Interpreters

CISLI will be holding a day long workshop on

“Working with Deaf Interpreters”

facilitated by Teresa Lynch and Frankie Berry

Saturday 22 October 2016, in DCC, 96 O Connell St. Limerick City

11.00am – 4.00pm

_____

This will be followed by a

CISLI General Meeting for Members

4.30pm – 6.00pm

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If you are interested in attending, please email csweeneyisl@gmail.com

Please note that the training is open to CISLI members (Active, Student, Affiliate or Associate) ONLY, but non-members can join and attend on the day

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