Booking Interpreters

Quick info: Interpreters are scheduled to be available throughout the day every Tuesday and Thursday (except in August when bookings are not available). Should you require an interpreter for your assignment on these days, please ensure to check the Office Interpreter Timetable for availability and booking details.

1. Centre Policy

It is the responsibility of all staff at DCAL to ensure access to communication by all people in a meeting. Only Deaf staff have access to interpreters through the Access to Work scheme. If a Hearing staff member wants to book interpreters when no Deaf staff are present they must pay for the interpreters out of their own budget.

The link to the document to request this is: .DOC File (inter-fund.doc)

2. How to book interpreters at DCAL

DCAL’s Policy: It is the responsibility of all staff at DCAL to ensure access to communication by everyone at a meeting/event.
Only Deaf staff have access to interpreters through the Access to Work (AtW) scheme. If Hearing staff book interpreters when no Deaf staff are present, they must pay for the interpreters out of their own budget.

Role of DCAL Reasonable Adjustments Co-ordinator
Note: This is a 2-day/week post and does not replace the role of previous the DCAL interpreting co-ordinator post. The processes below takes the above factors into account.

To manage interpreter bookings for regular DCAL meetings (management, staff and science) and timetabled UCL lectures (those timetabled in advance).
Important Note: For meetings and lectures that require rescheduling at short notice (less than 2 weeks), the organiser/tutor should take responsibility to book interpreters.
Manage collection and dissemination of preparation material for the regular bookings detailed in pt 1.
Process ALL interpreting invoices and related AtW claims.
Monitor individual AtW budgets and provide periodical expenditure reports to budget holders.
Reconcile the AtW account, ensuring all reimbursements are received in a timely manner. Follow-up promptly with AtW if there are any missing payments.

The coordinator will not be responsible for booking or setting up rooms or undertaking any translation themselves.

Individual bookings
All Deaf and Hearing staff requiring interpreting for anything other than those defined above (1), should make these booking themselves.

How?
- Make bookings on BSL Beam.
- All Deaf and Hearing staff are required to register with BSL Beam and will have full access. This means the requests will be managed entirely by the requester.

What are the responsibilities involved in managing your own bookings?
This means:
- choosing and confirming interpreters
- sending prep
- receiving invoices
*Prior to confirming a booking, please check with the interpreter(s) if they have been registered as a UCL supplier. If not, then you need to inform the Reasonable Adjustments Co-ordinator and put them in touch with the interpreter(s) to collect further details. UCL will reject payment if this information is not provided. Please be aware that setting up a new supplier takes a couple of weeks so payment may be delayed if information is not provided in advance. Access DCAL list of suppliers for interpreters and other communication support

What exactly you need to do in practice…
- Make booking in BSL Beam, include:
  - date
  - time
  - venue
  - description of the booking (‘invited speaker talk on ‘how to throw a good pot’ – Grayson Perry’).
- Check your booking periodically to see the interpreters who are available and choose which of them you want. Note: Check quoted cost fits your budget.
- Send interpreters prep.
- When the invoice arrives -forward this to co-ordinator, indicating date, description of booking and budget* to be charged. This information is important to enable the co-ordinator to match invoice to booking.
- Invoices MUST be passed on to co-ordinator within 5 working days of receipt – this deadline is not flexible as delays will impact on timely processing of payments and claims.
- Cancellations/revisions to bookings will also the responsibility by the requester.

* Notes for Hearing staff about charging for interpreter bookings.

If your booking is for an event that a Deaf member of staff is attending, it is OK to charge this to their AtW budget, as long as they have given consent. The invoice passed to the co-ordinator must include confirmation of consent… ‘X has agreed this can be charged to his/her AtW budget’
Bookings for events no Deaf member of staff attends cannot be charge to AtW. In this circumstance, the invoice passed the co-ordinator must be include a UCL Project code.
Making a booking on BSL Beam when both parties require access is a shared responsibility. Prior to confirming a booking, please do liaise with the Deaf person as to whether they have preferred interpreters.

Preparation Materials

The Reasonable Adjustment Co-ordinator is responsible for sending prep to the confirmed interpreters for all DCAL shared meetings. For individual or non-shared DCAL meetings, the requester is responsible for sending prep.
Preparation materials should be sent out by the Wednesday one week before the meeting (at the very latest). If no material is received by this date (fina chance will be the Monday of the week of the meeting), then the speaker/meeting will be cancelled.

3. BSL Beam

https://bslbeam.co.uk/

All interpreting time must be accounted for. Interpreting work in particular which are reclaimed from Access to Work is recorded first on the BSL Beam, so all DCAL staff need to be given their own log-in which will be set up during the induction period. Staff (if required and if permission is sought from the Access to Work budget holder) can be given access to view other staff’s bookings to help align booking interpreters with other booking times/dates.

4. Process of booking interpreters on BSL Beam

It won’t be necessary to fill in every box that is on BSL Beam. This guide will take you through the step to step by process of requesting interpreters and essential information to fill in.

Log into BSL Beam
Go to the tab Bulletin Board and select ‘Add’

A box will appear that looks like this:

Select the ‘Dates’ tab
Enter in the dates, start and end time (use 24 hour clock) and how many LSPs are required for your booking

Now go to the ‘Details’ tab
Click on ‘More’ to expand this section
The full section will be broken up in smaller sections here (via screenshots) with what essential details are required. Confirmed selections are highlighted in blue.

Booking made by: Select the name of the booking requester
Description: Enter a brief one line descripton of the booking (i.e. UCL Training: Career Development)
Venue Area: Enter location details
Region: Confirm region of where assignment is taking place
Assignment Type: Select which matches your booking
Notes: Add any relevant notes (one line) that would be useful

Elements visible to administrators screen grab

Allocate to: Select which is relevant for your booking
Client Name: Add your name
Email: Add your email
Telephone: Add telephone/SMS/whatsapp if you wish as an additional contact option
Address: Add address of where the assignment is taking place (here you can add full description including directions, useful landmarks and/or specific building instructions)

Full Description: Add full description and details of the booking (i.e. abstract, agenda, aims or summary) – include as much details as possible and include that prep will be sent to confirmed interpreters prior to the booking. It will also be useful to add how many people will be using BSL at the booking if known.
Venue Name: Add name of the venue
Venue Address: Add location details of the venue
Venue Contact Person: Add named person
Venue Telephone: Add telephone number of venue or yours if you wish
Venue Transport: Include details of how to arrive at the venue – nearest tube stations and walking times are useful to have
Number of Participants: Add how many deaf and how many hearing participants
Deaf Person’s Name: Add name(s) of deaf people at the booking

Dress Code: Select which is appropriate for your booking
Invoice To: Add name
Invoice Email Address: Add appropriate email address
Invoicing to details will depends on which budget the booking is coming from. Note: dcalinterpreters@ucl.ac.uk only deal with AtW-related bookings. If the booking is coming from a non AtW-budget, you should have a known project fund that will be covering these costs and designated/agreed administrator in advance for processing this invoices.

AtW: Select whether booking is cover under AtW or not
Once all your details have been filled in, make sure you press ‘SAVE’

Your booking will now be visible on BSL Beam
You will now have to keep checking from time to time as to whether any LSPs have come forward and confirm/reject as preferred.

When a LSP has come forward on your booking, select their name to choose which options of the booking decision you want to do
There will be a default email for each option – you can edit as required (i.e. send them their named co-worker if you wish to book them if applicable or explain why the booking has to be cancelled if you wish)
Once your LSPs have confirmed, send them an introductory email from your UCL account so that they can discuss co-working and preparation materials in advance

It's better to send preparation materials via your UCL email address rather than BSL Beam (so ignore the Send Info option) as you can attach relevant materials and their co-workers can exchange correspondences if necessary.

5. When interpreters are booked

Interpreters indicate their fee (inclusive of travel) on the Beam, but may request additional information before they do so. If the interpreting co-ordinator asks for additional information to send to the interpreter please reply promptly. If more than one interpreter has replied to the booking the interpreting co-ordinator may ask you for your preference.

Preference groups

You can set up an automatic preference group on the Beam so that only the interpreters named in it can see your booking when you click it on.

On the Beam Home page, click on the "Admin" tab on the left hand side.

In the extended tab, click on "Groups".

At the bottom right of the dialogue box "LSP Groups" is an "Add Group" tab. Click on it.

Fill in the "Add Group" dialogue box, assigning a letter, which will be the group's identifying mark. Click "Save".

A coloured box should now appear in the "LSP Groups" dialogue box, with your group name on it. To add LSPs to it, start typing their name in the "Search for LSPs:" box at the bottom.

All the names that match your typing will appear underneath in their own blue label. Click on the name in the blue label that you want and drag it into your preference box. Once you release the name it will fly back, but it will leave a copy of itself in the preference box.

When you have finished click-and-dragging names, you can go to any other of the tabs on the left hand side. Now, if you create a booking the single letter box in the colour you picked will appear greyed-out on the "Assignment Outline" dialogue box.

You can set up more than one preference group, each with different names in it. The interpreting co-ordinator will not be able to see the names in your preference groups, but will see the single letter box on your booking.

Checking your bookings

You will be sent an email to confirm that your booking has gone live.

Bookings that are green have been filled.