The North of England Refugee Service

The North of England Refugee Service is a charity that offers valuable support to help refugees and asylum seekers in the region, including helping with translation for medical and other important appointments.

To manage this service, the team needed a web-based platform to manage translators and the languages they speak, the sponsors of the service and the end-users.

The platform is a semi-automated booking service that matches an end-user with a translator and manages the workflow and billing between the translator and sponsor.

We carried out some consultancy work to identify a solution to their current challenge, which was to replace an access database with a web-based solution. This happened mid pandemic, when staff at the charity were struggling to work remotely due to the limitations of MS Access.

Problems

  • The team struggled to work remotely
  • The access database was running from one machine in the office
  • Only one person could work on the database at a time

Solution

Following the initial consultation work, we built a web-based solution to enable them to work remotely and with no limitation on the number of concurrent users able to use the system.

It enables all team members to access the platform from anywhere they have a data connection; in theory, all users could be using it at the same time, from anywhere in the world.

We also gave the whole system a general overhaul so the process of delivering translation services is much more efficient – and will remain so in the future.

At Sapere, working with charities such as the North of England Refugee Service is incredibly important to us. We appreciate the benefit of software and also understand that some businesses or organisations can’t afford it. If we give something back in the form of free development, it will have a longer impact and benefit to the charity than us simply making a financial donation.

Dr Mohamed Nasreldin, director of North of England Refugee Service said:

“The work carried out was done in a highly professional way and completed on time. The new system has helped us greatly in running our interpreting service smoothly and has improved our capacity to develop it further.”