Board meeting 3 & 4 March 2017

Kia ora, I am the NZSL Board Chair, Victoria Manning.

I am giving a summary of the recent NZSL Board meeting.

The recent meeting agenda included a number of things. Firstly, we had an independent person come to give us governance training. This was the same trainer who gave the NZSL Board governance training previously, and so provided a more in depth understanding of the NZSL Board’s governance role and how the NZSL Board works in relation to government and the community.

The next thing on the meeting agenda was the regular update from the NZSL Board’s secretariat, the Office for Disability Issues (ODI). This update reports on work progress under the NZSL Board’s Action Plan. This Action Plan with its five priorities is on the ODI website. Each of the Action Plan priorities (NZSL in the home, NZSL in education, etc) have work happening within government or by other initiatives. This ODI update provides the NZSL Board with information on progress happening in each of the Action Plan priority areas so that the NZSL Board can monitor this.

The secretariat also provided the NZSL Board with a work programme for all of the Board’s meetings and work focus for this year. Thus the NZSL Board could see its plan of work for the coming year.

The third thing covered in the recent meeting was the NZSL Board’s consideration of reviewing its Action Plan. This Action Plan has been going for about one and a half years now and the NZSL Board has monitored and learnt from its processes. The NZSL Board agreed it wants to review the current Action Plan. The NZSL Board’s long-term vision is the maintenance and promotion of NZSL and the NZSL Board want to ensure the Action Plan is strong and clearly connected to achieving that vision. So the NZSL Board discussed the processes it would use and follow for it to review its Action Plan.

The fourth thing covered in the meeting was consideration of standards for NZSL interpreters. This is one of the five priorities on the NZSL Board’s current Action Plan. The NZSL Board commissioned an independent report to investigate issues around establishing NZSL interpreter standards in New Zealand, including whether or not such standards need to be established in New Zealand and if so, how that might be done. The NZSL Board considered the resulting report on this. The report was a helpful initial step in understanding the issues and enabled the NZSL Board to discuss next steps to further consider the establishment of NZSL interpreter standards in New Zealand.

The fifth piece of work addressed in the recent NZSL Board meeting made use of one of the NZSL Board’s key roles and responsibilities, which is to provide advice to Government and government departments on matters related to NZSL. The Ministry of Education has a piece of work related to NZSL and sought advice from the NZSL Board on a proposal it had prepared. The NZSL Board read the proposal/paper and discussed its advice to the Ministry of Education on that proposal/paper. The NZSL Board’s advice covered a few things which will be passed on to the Ministry of Education.

Those are the five key things covered at the recent NZSL Board meeting.