Abstract
This research study explored the participants’ experiences of carrying out clinical work with families needing an interpreter in a Child And Adolescent Mental Health Service based in a deprived inner city location. An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used for this project in order to develop an in-depth understanding of the participants’ experience of their work with interpreters, and the meanings and beliefs associated with their experience. Most participants spoke about their reliance on language in their everyday work. Participants spoke about significant changes to the communication process when this work took place through an interpreter. The accessibility to the cultural meanings and metaphors was much more limited when participants had to work across language and culture. Their assessment and intervention questions were much harder to utilise with an interpreter. One of the most striking features of the participants’ accounts was their struggle and difficulty in establishing a co-worker relationship with an interpreter. The co-worker relationship seemed to be difficult to establish due to factors such as a lack of trust, fear of losing control, and social and professional inequities, getting in the way of this relationship. Participants spoke about becoming distanced from or peripheral to the work, and experienced difficulties in engaging families in the therapeutic process. Participants spoke about not being able to draw on as many of their therapeutic questions or techniques due to the changes and limitations associated with the translation process. This appeared to be associated with their therapeutic work with families becoming less reflective and much more behavioural in the help that was offered to families.