Women's Safety New South Wales is seeking legislative reform to improve interpreter services for victims and survivors of domestic or family violence.
It comes after a survey of front-line respondents revealed language is a major obstacle to gaining safety and support.
78 per cent of those surveyed indicated they were either extremely or very concerned clients with little or no English cannot access phone interpreter services on their own.
All recommended that it should be a legislative requirement for courts, police, and other government agencies to provide telephone interpreter services to people from non-English speaking backgrounds.
C-E-O of Women's Safety New South Wales Hayley Foster says training interpreters is crucial for victims and the interpreters themselves when dealing with trauma and violence.
SBS Assyrian spoke via ZOOM with Valentine Aghajani who is a teacher of Assyrian interpreting diploma course at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
Ms Aghajani agrees with the results of the survey and assert that there is a great need to have telephone interpreting services at courts, police station and other government institutions. play the video to watch
