Good practices

Take Care Project: Healthcare Language Guide for Migrants

Why Take Care project?

Being healthy is one of the most important preconditions for an individual to live and function normally in everyday life. If you feel ill or suffer from a disease, you go to see a doctor and get medical treatment. Migrants, who do not speak the language sufficiently, experience real communication problems when they need medical help. On the other side, healthcare professionals experience similar problems. To help out a patient it is essential to understand each other. For all this and more the Take Care Project has been initiated.

The main output of the project is the Take Care Language Guide for Migrants which consists of a Phrase Book, divided into 12 healthcare topics, a Word Fan that provides a list of approximately 30 words from each topic translated into 17 languages, a Medical route with information about the healthcare system of the country and a Basic Language Emergency Kit that helps healthcare providers communicate with migrants in emergency situations.

Based on the language guide a training course for educators is developed to support them when helping migrants to improve their language skills on health matters.

Year(s): 2012-2014

Target group(s): Educators / healthcare workers / social workers integration of migrants / migrants

Website or other online channels: www.takecareproject.eu

Methodology

The methodology for Take Care workshops is designed to enable professionals working for/with migrants to facilitate migrants‘ learning of healthcare language and communication. The main educational resource featured in the workshops is the Take Care Healthcare Language Guide. The guide consists of a range of learning materials in different languages and country-specific information on healthcare systems across Europe.

Depending on the needs or interests of the enrolled participants the workshop trainers may bring in additional reference materials about adult education, language education and/or healthcare matters. In terms of equipment, several computers with Internet connection, a printer, a digital camera and a video recorder are necessary.

Type of product

Paper-based material Online resource Course / Training

Brief description of the outcomes

Take Care Language Guide for Migrants consists of a phrase book, divided into 12 healthcare topics, a word fan that provides a list of approximately 30 words from each topic translated into 17 languages, a medical route with information about the healthcare system of the country and a Basic Language Emergency Kit that helps healthcare providers communicate with migrants in emergency situations, available in 17 languages.

The language course enables migrants to pick up survival words and phrases for better integration into a new society and get basic language competences on health care matters.

The training program is designed to help educators with their integration courses for migrants.

Impact on target groups / Transferability potential

The Take Care project meets on the one hand the needs of migrants and contributes to their better integration and on the other hand helps to improve the communication between migrants and healthcare providers. Healthcare providers gain more knowledge about migrants’ cultural backgrounds and are provided with a basic language emergency kit to deal with communication problems when helping migrants in emergency situations. The project outcomes are developed in several languages and are easily transferable to other countries that are not originally included in the project. The digital materials are available on the project website and can be freely used.

Promoter of the initiative: PRESSURE LINE in cooperation with 7 EU partner organisations

Country: Bulgaria Cyprus Germany Lithuania Netherlands Portugal Romania Spain

Languages available: Bulgarian Dutch English Greek Lithuanian Portuguese Romanian Spanish German