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The Next Step Language Lines Service and how it helped Helisa find work
The Next Step Language Lines Service, which consists of a team of dedicated and committed bi-lingual advisers, offers free and impartial support over the telephone in Farsi, French, Gujarati, Polish, Punjabi, Somali, Sylheti and Urdu.
The dedicated service to help individuals from ethnic cultures to access learning and careers advice is increasing in popularity thanks to its community outreach activity. Next Step’s Community Liaison Officer Siraj Yusuf works to develop and maintain relationships with key organisations within the ethnic and eastern European communities in order to raise awareness of the service.
Since August last year, he has been reaching out into the heart of these communities to better contact those who would benefit from the service, targeting community centres, places of worship and local libraries within the multi-cultural communities. And as a result of this activity, the service saw a 20% increase in call volumes from August to October 2011 compared to the previous three months.
One Next Step Language Lines Service user is Helisa Bagheri, who moved to Stretford from Iran almost a year ago. Helisa didn’t expect the language barrier to cause her such difficulties as she is qualified to degree level in Iran.
However, Helisa soon realised that competition for jobs was high and that she would need to improve her English if she was to succeed and find work. Helisa was searching the internet, looking for courses to help her improve her English, when she came across Next Step and the dedicated element of the service to help individuals from ethnic cultures to access learning and careers advice.
Helisa made contact with Next Step and was immediately put through to the Language Lines Service. She was quickly supported in finding a course at her local college to improve her spoken English.
Helisa decided to get back in touch with Next Step’s Language Lines Service once she had completed the course. Helisa underwent sessions with a Next Step adviser to improve her CV writing skills and to help her prepare for interviews. This was done over the telephone, and Helisa was supported with the tools available online too.
Once she had her CV ready, Helisa began to look for work, and she soon found a receptionist’s position advertisement - and she secured the job.
Next Step advisers offer a brokerage service to support clients in these situations, transferring them through to colleges and other providers and staying on the line to act as an interpreter to ensure the customer fully understands the enrolment process, whilst advisers are able to offer a full level of support in the enrolment process as an interpreter.
Community Liaison Officer Siraj Yusuf concluded:
“The Next Step Language Lines Service reaches out to people from ethnic and eastern European cultures in order to ensure those within these communities have full access to learning and careers advice. Whatever the reason people want to improve their English skills, whether it be to speak English for the first time, improve their English for communicating in everyday situations or to feel more confident when looking for work, Next Step can help.”
For more information on the Next Step Language Lines Service click here
Read the full press release Community Action Reaps Rewards
