CareLineLive customer Delta Care was asked by the Blackpool Council to provide care for a client from Kuwait who is an asylum seeker currently housed in a hotel. The client spoke Arabic but had no English.
Initial visits to the lady had been frustrating as she had not really understood what the carers had been sent to do and often the visits would end without care being provided. A translator was therefore brought in for one visit but would obviously not be available in the long term.
Branch Coordinator Annaliese Carter decided to use Google Translate to discover a few terms in Arabic. She says “I wrote them down phonetically so carers could use these phrases to try to help the lady feel more connected. I also suggested that the carers put Google Translate on their phones if they are having difficulties. We know that it is not a perfect translation but this service user now feels like she has a voice and is able to communicate far better. It is great that we managed to open the door to being able to communicate with her in her own language rather than her having to deal with everything in English. She has more of a say in her care now and understands what we are there to do – particularly important in the personal care we are providing.”
Annaliese used Google Translate to translate the care package from English into Arabic. It worked so well that the local authority later contacted Delta Care to say that the hotel management had asked why the council care plan hadn’t been translated too. They have since followed Delta Care’s lead in using Google Translate for their own documentation.
Delta Care has used the experience of the Arabic translations to benefit another service user in Preston. They are planning on translating her care plan into Guajarati and pass that onto Lancashire County Council.
Delta Care is a domiciliary care agency based in the North West that has just celebrated its 30th birthday. Delta employs 220 care staff across 6 branches in the North West from Macclesfield to Blackpool and has been using CareLineLive since 2021 which was also the point at which they fully embraced digital record keeping. Expansion in recent years has seen them adding three new branches and doubling in size.
Branch Coordinator Annaliese Carter is pictured here.
