Sheffield City Council

Although a significant volume of information is openly available on the Council’s website, current interactions between migrants and Sheffield City Council are mostly done in person or over the phone. The reasons behind this fact include the lack of personalised content online, e.g. for migrants from specific countries or in particular cases, based on previous interactions; the migrants’ inexperience with the UK system and lack of knowledge of the English language; the perception and lack of trust from migrants regarding providing information into online forms; the inherent complexities of the processes, particularly in cases requiring long term engagement with the migrants.

The volume of face-to-face/phone interactions with citizens whose native language is not English, and thus requiring interpretation or translation, is very high. This option was used by 1500 citizens in 2014 alone, resulting in enormous costs to the Council: in 2014, the costs with translation and interpretation exceeded 386,000 Euros. In addition, the need to rely on human interpreters and translators severely delays the interaction process.
Support and advice for issues concerning children of migrants living in the UK thus present several complexity factors and potential benefits that makes this an ideal use-case for SIMPATICO.