Heartbeat: Keeping mum – maternity guide reimagined for our local community

September 30, 2020

An essential maternity guide to allaying anxiety is the latest publication to be fully translated into multiple other languages as the Trust continues a push to make more of its information and guides available to non-English speakers.

The COVID-19 related publication, Managing Anxiety in the Perinatal Period, is the latest in a series of important messages worked on by library services, communications and the interpreter service that have been translated into other languages to help with the accessibility of key information in our geographical area. This leaflet, in particular, has been translated into five additional languages: Bengali, Kurdish, Punjabi, Romanian, Tigrian and Urdu.

“If you are pregnant, or have recently had a baby, it is reasonable to expect that you might be feeling more anxious than usual,” explains Anuji Evans,

External Communications Manager. “By translating leaflets into other languages, specifically ones prevalent in our local area, or ones that have been identified as being useful by the service concerned, we’re helping as a Trust to educate, and inform those harder to reach people within our community. No one is left in the unknown because their first language isn’t English.”

Previously, only primary messages and items that specifically required certain languages – be they via leaflets, posters, graphics, videos or animations produced by the Trust received translations. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed matters, and the Trust Board has identified that an increase in translations would be beneficial to healthcare within the community.

If your service has leaflets that require updating, or you have a new one that needs to be created, please email swbh.library@nhs.net or call ext. 3587. Please note, they will respond to your request within six working days and the process to update or create your leaflet will begin.