Ethos

The membership group known as Visual Language Professionals (VLP), is an association which represents communication professionals whose working languages are English and British Sign Language (BSL). VLP represents its members by promoting high standards, encouraging good practice and providing peer support and training.

The aims of the group are:

• To promote and maintain high standards of sign language interpreting
• To support other professionals working with the Deaf community
• To encourage good communication practice
• To provide information to interpreters, and users of interpreting services
• To provide peer group support, and local and national networking opportunities
• To recommend, provide and or signpost appropriate professional training and development to our membership
• To help minimise the cost of training to our members
• To work in collaboration with other organisations within the field, to benefit the profession as a whole.
• To provide Public Indemnity Insurance cover for appropriately qualified members working in a freelance capacity
• To provide access to our online forum

Visual Language Professionals has been developed by a small group of qualified interpreters. The original steering group were Alan Haythornthwaite, David Wycherley, Van Holtom, Melissa Barker-Simpson and Alexia Blohm-Pain. We also welcomed Linda Ahmed in 2011 who replaced Alexia on the committee, and were delighted to welcome Karen Gillespie in April 2012.

We look forward to you joining us in this exciting new association. Please feel free to get in touch via the 'Contact Us' page.

We are grateful to our patron John Lee (below) for his support in setting up Visual Language Professionals