29 Mar 2010
Mothertongue hosts seminar in London
On Tuesday, 9 February 2010 Mothertongue hosted a seminar at the King's Fund, in central London entitled: Mother tongue or non native language? Working effectively across languages in front line services.

This seminar was planned, prepared and delivered in response to a sharpening focus of interest in language, amongst professionals in frontline services.

Increasingly, people are moving across borders in pursuit of, for example, work, safety and refuge. An inevitable consequence of this is that there are many people accessing services, including counselling services, who do not speak the official language of the country in which they find themselves. In London it is estimated that over 300 languages are spoken by schoolchildren. 150 languages are spoken in Reading schools. This has an impact in terms of language resources for frontline services.

Responses to this have included the recruitment of more bilingual and multilingual staff, the increased use of interpreters and offering services in non- native languages. The seminar addressed each of these responses from a psychosocial, psychotherapeutic and psycholinguistic perspective. There were a number of presentations and there were several facilitated sessions for questions and discussions.

The presenters were: Dr Felicity de Zulueta, Professor Jean-Marc Dewaele, Susan Stevens, Dr Noreen Tehrani, Professor Rachel Tribe,Beverley Costa, Anne Marie Fox and Jocelyn Avigad.

As a result of the conference a Forum for Bilingual/Multilingual Therapists and Interpreters is being formed. This forum will provide a space for ideas, experience, learning and good practice across languages to be shared. It will also be a source of support and will offer a network of supervision in a variety of languages. The first meeting of the Bilingual/Multilingual Therapists and Interpreters Forum will be on Tuesday 25th May 11am-1pm at the King’s Fund. This is an opportunity to participate at the start to influence the form and shape the forum will take. Please contact kim@mothertongue.org.uk to reserve your place