Response form for consultation on draft compliance notice

Transcription

1 Response form for consultation on draft compliance notice Consultation closing date: 10 Hydref 2018 Name of body: Public Health Wales NHS Trust The Welsh Language Commissioner ( the Commissioner ) is consulting with the body ( you ) on the contents of your draft compliance notice in accordance with section 47 of the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 ( the Measure ). You should consider the contents of the draft compliance notice alongside the Welsh Language Standards (No.7) Regulations 2018 ( the regulations ). If you do not participate in the consultation, this does not prevent the Commissioner from issuing you with a final compliance notice. The Measure 1 notes that it is your responsibility to show that the requirement to comply with a standard, or to comply with it in a particular respect, is unreasonable or disproportionate. On the basis of evidence received as part of this consultation, the Commissioner may impose other standards included within the regulations that have not been imposed within the draft compliance notice. 2 Please return this form together with any other further information to compliancenotice@welshlanguagecommissioner.wales by the above closing date. The response form has been divided into two parts: 1 Section 57(2) of the Measure 2 A draft compliance notice is the notice given under section 47 of the Measure Page 1 of 16

2 Part 1: Confirming whether or not you carry out an activity Before determining the contents of your compliance notice under section 44 of the Measure, the Commissioner wishes to receive further information and/or evidence in relation to specific standards and the degree in which you carry out or are likely to carry out an activity. Please complete the column on the right. Service delivery Activity Receiving inpatients Holding case conferences Use of social media Receiving visitors to the body s buildings (in line with the definition provided in paragraph 52, Schedule 1 of the regulations) Standard(s) Do you undertake the activity or are you likely to undertake the activity? Please place an x in the appropriate box Yes already undertake the activity 25 Yes already undertake the activity Yes already undertake the activity Yes already undertake the activity Page 2 of 16

3 Operational Page 3 of 16 Awarding of grants (including e.g. grants for charities) Awarding of contracts (including e.g. enquiring about quotes) Offering educational courses Using Welsh within the body s internal administration. Particularly, the body s use of ESR for the purposes of standards (and others if relevant) and the body s responsibility in relation to that system. Recruiting and appointing. Particularly, the body s use of NHS Yes already undertake the activity Yes already undertake the activity 63 Yes already undertake the activity (and others) Please provide comments here regarding your responsibilities towards the ESR system and the standards affected by that system. ESR is the NHS HR & Payroll system used throughout England and Wales, and Public Health Wales has fully implemented the system. ESR is an Oracle-based system provided by IBM. It is currently only available with English language functionality. This means that compliance with standard 81 (d) (dd) and (e) is not currently possible and will not be possible until Welsh language functionality is available. Discussions regarding ESR being available in Welsh are being led by the Welsh Government and PHW will fully implement any Welsh Language developments if and when they become available. Please provide comments here regarding your responsibilities towards these recruiting and appointing systems and the standards affected by those systems.

4 Jobs and Trac Jobs systems (and any other relevant systems) and the body s responsibilities in relation to those systems. Public Health Wales jobs are advertised on NHS Jobs. Job adverts, job descriptions and person specifications are currently available in English only, unless a Welsh essential job is advertised. Public Health Wales is a service user of the TRAC recruitment system which is maintained by the NHS Wales Shared Service Partnership. TRAC is used to generate vacancy requests. Welsh language functionality is available. Public Health Wales has not switched on the Welsh language functionality. This is because current functionality requires all job adverts, job descriptions and person specifications to be available in Welsh and, as mentioned above, Public Health Wales does not currently produce these documents in Welsh as a matter of course. The draft Compliance Notice prepared by the Welsh Language Commissioner includes standard 107A. This requires all job descriptions to be published in Welsh and English. However, standard 106A does not require all job adverts to be published in Welsh and English, only those that relate to jobs where Welsh language skills are essential, desirable, and must be learnt. This means that adverts that relate to jobs that do not require Welsh language skills can be in English only. Our understanding is that TRAC functionality will not allow this, in that it all documents must be in Welsh. The current TRAC system, therefore, will not enable compliance with Standards 106A and 107A. Carrying out clinical consultations A Yes already undertake the activity 114 Yes already undertake the activity Page 4 of 16

5 Audio announcements in the workplace Comment box for any additional information from you: Holding case conferences: Public Health Wales does hold case conferences but as local authority personnel are not present, our case conferences do not meet the definition of a case conference stated in the Regulations. For that reason, standards which deal with case conferences have not been included in our draft compliance notice. We have been given to understand that our case conferences must comply with standards 22, 22A, and 22CH which relate to meetings between a body and more than one invited person. Page 5 of 16

6 Part 2: The reasonableness and proportionality of the standards 2 and 3 Our screening services deal with a substantial proportion of the population of Wales, e.g. all women aged (breast and cervical screening), every single baby born in Wales (Newborn hearing screening and Newborn blood spot screening), all adults aged (bowel screening). We do not currently ask recipients whether they wish to receive future correspondence in Welsh since all Screening standard invitations and letters are issued bilingually. Adding a question about language preference to our letter templates and recording language preference would not have a positive impact on the service we offer in terms of correspondence because everything is already bilingual. It would, however, have a substantial negative impact or our operations. For example, our current letter templates have no room for additional text, so adding a question about language preference would need to be put onto an additional sheet of paper. This means additional letter weight and if the new letters do tip into the next weight category, the annual postage cost would increase by approximately 140,000 per annum for first invitations. Each screening programme is supported by a separate IT system which manages an individual s journey through each screening episode and ensures they are invited and recalled appropriately. All processes are currently set up to issue everything bilingually. In order for the system to automatically send out a letter in accordance with language preference, all processes would have to be reviewed and revised and the IT system / software would need to be reconfigured. To do this manually would be difficult to manage administratively. It costs 50 per letter to pull a letter out of the print run and to change it into Welsh only. Forms are currently bilingual. If a request were We request an that the draft compliance notice be amended to include an exemption in relation to bilingual screening correspondence screening correspondence and forms on condition that all correspondence and forms are issued bilingually simultaneously. Page 6 of 16

7 made for Welsh only forms, separate versions would have to be printed. These would have to be manually inserted into envelopes. Whilst we think it would be technically possible to make the changes to the IT systems to meet the standard, there would be substantial financial implications to doing so. We estimate that amending the IT systems to record individual preferences, maintain that information and act on it would cost around 274,000, (inclusive of analysis, design, development and testing) with additional annual maintenance costs of approximately 50,000. There would also be staff resource implications. Since the additional cost and upheaval would not result in any improvement in terms of bilingual corrspondence, our opinion is that it would be unreasonable and disproportionate to require our screening sevices to comply with this standard. 4 and 5 When Public Health Wales considered the draft regulations, standard 4 included the word individual and we had no concerns about meeting this standard. However, the standard has since been amended and now includes the word person which changes the requirements significantly and we have concerns about its impact on the efficiency of our daily business operations. Public Health Wales staff correspond with several persons every day, both formally and informally. The standard would require every member of staff to correspond bilingually every time they write to more than one person, irrespective of the known language preference of the recipients. For example, the Welsh language officer corresponds with her counterparts in other health boards and trusts, local authorities, etc. When she corresponds with Welsh speaking Welsh language officers, she does so in Welsh only. When she corresponds with several persons who do not speak Welsh, she corresponds in English only. This standard would require her to correspond in both Welsh and English in both scenarios, which would be wholly unnecessary and time We request a variation to the standards, which allows staff to correspond in Welsh only, English only or bilingually based on the known language preference of the recipient. We also request an exemption for informal business correspondence. For example: When you send the same formal business correspondence to several persons, you must send a Welsh language version of the correspondence at the same time as you send any English language version unless you already know whether all the persons wish to Page 7 of 16

8 consuming. She would be able to do so at no additional financial cost because she is a fluent Welsh speaker. The vast majority of our staff do not speak Welsh and they correspond with several persons several times daily. They, and less fluent or less confident Welsh speakers would need access to translation services to enable them to correspond bilingually every time, irrespective of their knowledge that none of the recipients speak Welsh. This would be wholly unnecessary, time consuming and costly, and it would have a significant adverse impact on the efficiency of our business, with no benefit to the recipients. receive correspondence from you in Welsh only or in English only We also request an imposition day of 18 months rather than 6 months. In our opinion, the requirement to correspond bilingually when the language preference is known is unreasonable. We therefore seek a variation to the standard, reflecting the requirements of standard 5, where bilingual correspondence is required only when the language preference is not known. We also seek a variation to the standard in that it would apply only to formal business correspondence. 7 Standards 4 and 5 would place new requirements on Public Health Wales to correspond bilingually with persons, which include colleagues in health boards, trusts, local government, etc. Currently, we do not have systems or budgets in place to enable compliance with these standards. We need reasonable time to calculate the additional costs of translation accurately and to formulate and submit budget bids to the Board for approval in autumn We also need reasonable time to establish efficient, timely and cost effective business processes for translation of correspondence that fall under these two standards. As stated in our response to standards 2 and 3, our current screening invitation templates have no room for additional text, so adding the statement required under this standard would need an additional sheet of paper. This A longer imposition day for screening correspondence this standard in line with the Page 8 of 16

9 could mean additional letter weight and, therefore, potential additional postage costs of approximately 140,000 as set out in our response to standards 2 and 3. This standard would require all letters subsequent to the invitation letter to include this statement, so there could be costs in addition to the 140,000 mentioned above. We would need time to calculate the additional costs accurately for each screening programme and to formulate and submit budget bids to the Board for approval. 10 Public Health Wales hosts the NHS Wales Health Collaborative. It s current reception staff at River House, Gwaelod y Garth who manage the main telephone line do not speak Welsh and therefore unable to deal with any calls in Welsh. In time, it should be possible to have Welsh speaking Reception staff at River House. 16 Public Health Wales hosts the NHS Wales Health Collaborative. It s main office in Gwaelod y Garth has a Unify telephone system. It is not possible to amend the automated response facility to meet this standard. We must therefore consider changing our telephone system which will involve costs which we are able to identify at this time, but it will also take time to secure the required funds and time to implement if we are successful. We therefore seek a variation to this standard allow a longer imposition day for the Unify system in River House, Gwaelod y Garth. 17 We are very concerned about this standard. Public Health Wales staff currently provide their telephone numbers in their signatures. The requirements of this standard will inevitably mean that in order to comply with this standard, we will have no option but to instruct its non Welsh speaking staff to remove these details from their signatures since they will not be unable to comply with the standard if they receive external calls. They would also have to be instructed to include the main Public Health Wales telephone number as this is staffed by Welsh speakers. imposition day for standards 2 and 3, i.e. 2 years. A longer imposition day of 2 years would allow time for the for the Collaborative to identify/train/recruit Welsh speaking staff for its main number at River House, Gwaelod y Garth. A longer imposition day, i.e. 18 months, for the Unify system in River House, Gwaelod y Garth. Public Health Wales seeks a longer imposition day, i.e. 2 years instead of 6 months. We also seek a variation to the standard which exempts calls from NHS Wales staff who have access to the global address book. Page 9 of 16

10 The number of calls to the main number will therefore increase substantially and this will inevitably lead to a requirement to recruit more staff rquired to deal with these calls. This will place an additional burden / pressure on the department responsible for the main Public Health Wales number in CQ2, Cardiff. The individuals who staff the main number will not have the knowledge or expertise to deal with the call neither in English nor in Welsh therefore in accordance with the standard, they will transfer the call to the non Welsh speaking staff from whom the calls were diverted in the first place. This standard will place an additional, substantial financial burden on PHW. Our ability to comply is relaint on securing an additional budget to increase staffing levels on the main number, and on our ability to recruit Welsh speakers to the main switchboard. There is also another issue which places Public Health Wales at considerable risk of non-compliance with this standard. Every NHS Wales staff member has easy access to the NHS Wales global address book which contains the telephone number of every NHS staff member. If a Welsh speaking member of staff from another health board or trust accesses and dials the number they require from the global address book, they are likely to reach a non Welsh speaking staff member who will not be able to comply with the requirements of the standard. We have considered the possibility of intercepting every inbound external call to a direct dial number with an interactive menu choice (Interactive Voice Response - IVR) to either allow progress to the original dialled number or to divert to a pre-decided reception number. There is no feasible mechanism for this under the Alcatel and Mitel phone systems used in Public Health Wales premises. A number of Public Health Wales staff are based in hospitals, schools and other non Public Health Wales premises, and they use the phone Page 10 of 16

11 systems in those buildings. We have checked with health boards and trusts and we have received confirmation from some that IVR is not available on direct dial numbers. IVR is therefore not a viable option available to Public Health Wales to enable compliance with this standard. Public Health Wales seeks a longer imposition day for this standard, which would allow sufficient time for PHW to research telephony, staffing and budget solutions. 19 We require time to research and identify solutions and implement arrangements for the recording of language preference in line with GDPR requirements. 21, 22, 22A and 22 CH The nature of Public Health Wales is that we seek to embed public health policy and practice in all settings. In so doing, we work closely and hold many meetings with a wide range of external stakeholders in the public, private and third sectors across Wales every day to achieve our aims and objectives. Some of our partners are the Welsh Government, all health boards and trusts, all local authorities, Natural Resources Wales, Welsh Local Government Association, Foods Standards Agency. When we invite them to meetings, we do not routinely ask our partners or individuals or groups of staff who work for them whether they wish to speak Welsh at the meeting. All meetings are held in English unless all those attending the meetings speak Welsh, which is rarely the case. Due to the volume of meetings held across Wales every day, we are concerned that there are insufficient numbers of interpreters available who could service such meetings. If there are a sufficient number of interpreters available, the cost could be several hundred pounds per meeting. This multiplied by several meetings a day across Wales could cost several thousand pounds per day. One of our services has calculated that it has approximately 120 hours of business meetings with partners /stakeholders per week in screening premises. If translation is required for 6 hrs per week (312 hours per year) the annual cost for interpretation would be 15-30,000 plus administrative costs. If every service has similar costs, the total cost We request a longer imposition day, i.e. 18 months rather than 6 months. We request a variation to the standard in that it exempts business meetings with external organisations. If the exemption is not awarded we request a longer imposition day, i.e. 18 months rather than 6 months. Page 11 of 16

12 would be substantial. It is not possible to quantify the annual cost to the organisation as this is a new standard and the activity is not current practice. We estimate a minimum of 50,000 per annum. We therefore do not consider it reasonable or proportionate to make the standards applicable to such dealings as we do not have the resources to ensure compliance. We request a variation to the standard in that it exempts business meetings with external organisations. If the exemption is not awarded, we need reasonable time to establish efficient, timely and cost effective business processes and budget provision for simultaneous interpretation in meetings. Another area of concern is a meeting which is attended by persons in multiple locations outside the host meeting room by means of teleconference, video conference, Skype, etc. Should 10% of persons wish to use Welsh at the meeting, translation facilities would have to be provided at each location where a non Welsh speaker is attending. This would be logistically problematic to arrange, and it would also be very expensive. We therefore request a variation to be applied which exempts meetings which are attended by persons in other locations. 36 Activities relating to research would be exempt under the regulations, and this would include validated questionnaires. Non research related validated questionnaires should also be exempt from translation and, therefore, this standard as meaning and intention are part of what makes a questionnaire valid. Because of this the words will be understood differently to some degree, and a questionnaire written in one language then translated into another, is therefore not an equivalent survey instrument. Discrepancies in how a question is perceived can occur during translation, which could affect the scientific integrity of the results, without appropriate population and cohort testing of any translated instrument. We request a variation to the standard which exempts meetings which are attended by persons in other locations. We request a variation to this standard to exempt validated questionnaires. Page 12 of 16

13 Copyright and intellectual property of validated questionnaires may inhibit permission for translation because of the above reasons affecting scientific integrity associated with any translated document, and the quality of the subsequent results linked to the author or licence holder. 37 Public Health Wales will need to undertake research to identify the types of documents it produces and the intended audiences and we will also need to develop and agree assessment criteria. In order to do this properly we are of the opinion that this will take up to 12 months to complete. 44 Standard 37 relating to documents requires an assessment to be undertaken to determine whether documents and forms should be produced in Welsh. The determination is made on the basis of the subject matter of the document and the expectations of the anticipated audience. We request a variation to standard 44 based on the principles established under standard 37, i.e. that an assessment should be undertaken to determine whether an app should be produced in Welsh, based on the subject matter of the app and the expectations of the anticipated users of the app. 45 We currently translate scheduled / planned / generic posts on our corporate / departmental social media accounts at live events but do not translate ad-hoc tweets posted at events as we have few or no fluent Welsh speakers, and no in-house translation. We wish to be able to continue to post ad hoc comments relating to specific issues and comments made by speakers at our events, A longer imposition day of 12 months rather than 6 months. We request a variation to standard 44, for example: All apps that you publish must function fully in Welsh, and the Welsh language must be treated no less favourably than the English language in relation to that app (a) If the subject matter of the app suggests that it should be produced in Welsh and (b) If the anticipated audience, and their expectations, suggests that it should be produced in Welsh We request an additional variation to the standard which exempts ad-hoc posts at live events, for example: Page 13 of 16

14 which cannot be planned. It would be an additional cost to provide ad hoc Welsh tweets by hiring a Welsh translator for each event of which there are hundreds every year. If we can t tweet on an ad hoc basis due to cost, this will adversely affect the effectiveness of our social media presence and our ability to share good practice and learning with all our partners and international colleagues. We therefore request an exemption for unscheduled / ad-hoc posts on corporate / departmental accounts at live events. 50 Reception staff in our Capital Quarter building are Welsh speaking and can offer a Welsh reception service. However, when they are absent due to lunch break, annual leave or sickness, non Welsh speaking staff provide cover. We cannot provide a service in Welsh at such times therefore PHW will be unable to comply with this standard. Staff in other reception areas such as Carmarthen and Llantrisant do not speak Welsh so we cannot offer a Welsh language service there at all. You must comply with standard 45 except in the following circumstances: when using unscheduled social media on your corporate and departmental accounts at live events We request a longer imposition day, i.e. 2 years rather than 6 months. Given the absence of Welsh language skills in current staff, compliance by the proposed 6 month imposition day is unachievable and unreasonable. A 2 year imposition day would allow time to plan a bilingual reception workforce for every area in Wales, but our ability to provide a Welsh reception everywhere by the imposition day is wholly reliant on vacancies arising and this may not happen. Our only other option is to secure a budget to fund additional reception staff. This will take time and we would need a 2 year imposition day to allow sufficient time to meet the standard. 63 Some training is delivered by members of staff or volunteers. We do not have sufficient Welsh speakers to deliver these courses in Welsh. Standard 19 in the draft compliance notice (relating to telephone calls) includes an exemption relating to the absence of Welsh speaking staff available to provide a service We request a variation to the standard as follows: You must comply with standard 63 in every circumstance, except: Page 14 of 16

15 on a specific subject matter. We request a variation to the standard which applies the principle established in standard 19 to standard 63. Should the variation not be awarded, to meet this standard our only option would be to provide simultaneous translation from English to Welsh as an alternative for those wishing to receive the course in Welsh. This would incur additional costs which in our opinion would be disproprtionate to the benefits of providing simultaneous translation from English into Welsh. We would need sufficient time to secure funding for translation of materials and simultaneous translation, and we anticipate that this would take at least 18 months We would need sufficient time to secure funding for simultaneous translation and to put appropriate arrangements, procedures training and guidance in place, and we anticipate that this will take 12 months. 97 Some of the training provided to employees is delivered by Public Health Wales staff (subject matter experts) and many of these do not speak Welsh. Therefore, it would not be possible to deliver certain courses in Welsh. It would be possible to deliver courses in Welsh where the subject matter expert does speak Welsh. Where we do not have internal subject matter experts we contract external training providers and not all companies employ Welsh speaking subject matter experts. In the absence of internal and external Welsh speaking subject expert trainers, our only option would be to provide simultaneous translation from English into Welsh which involves additional cost. In our opinion, we cannot meet this requirement within a 6-month imposition period, and that 18 months is a more realistic target. Our Line Management roadshow training includes role plays with experienced staff from across the organisation to deliver as true to life picture as possible of scenarios mangers are likely to face. In order to provide this training in Welsh, we would have to identify Welsh speaking staff who would be suitable and willing to be trained to undertake the role plays in Welsh. Given the low numbers of Welsh speaking staff in Public Health Wales, we are concerned where no Welsh speaking member of staff is available to provide training on that specific subject matter. However, supporting course material must to be provided in Welsh. We request a longer imposition day, i.e. 18 months rather than 6 months. We request a longer imposition day, i.e. 12 months rather than 6 months. We ask for a variation to this standard as follows: You must comply with standard 97 in every circumstance, except: where courses are delivered by the body s own staff and they do not speak Welsh where courses are delivered by external providers and they do not speak Welsh where an invitation or material advertising the training has asked attendees to inform you whether they wish to attend the training in Welsh, and that no attendee has informed you that Page 15 of 16

16 that may not be successful in terms identifying such staff, meaning that we would have to draw in actors at cost, or provide translation from Welsh into English (which we believe would result in sub-optimal training) at cost. In our opinion, we cannot meet this requirement within a 6-month imposition period, and that 18 months is a more realistic target. 99 In our opinion, we cannot achieve compliance in 6 months. Complying with this standard would involve researching and developing the training course, identifying a suitable trainer, arranging a training schedule and suitable training venues. In our opinion, 18 months is a more realistic target. they wish to attend the training in Welsh. We request a longer imposition day, i.e. 18 months rather than 6 months in relation to this standard. We request a longer imposition day, i.e. 18 months rather than 6 months in relation to this standard. 106A and 107A This standard requires all job descriptions to be published in Welsh and English. However, standard 106A does not require all job adverts to be published in Welsh and English, only those that relate to jobs where Welsh language skills are essential, desirable, and must be learnt. This means that adverts that relate to jobs that do not require Welsh language skills can be in English only. Our understanding is that TRAC functionality will not allow this, in that it requires all adverts and job descriptions to be in Welsh. The current TRAC system, therefore, will not enable compliance with Standards 106A and 107A. We suggest that a 2 year compliance deadline be included in the compliance notice to allow time for Shared Services to amend TRAC functionality to enable full compliance with standards 106A and 107A. Page 16 of 16