The third counsellor who has kindly offered to share their experiences of working at the Multilingual counselling service is Jenny who has been at WCC since 2020. Jenny works primarily with Latin American clients in Spanish, many of whom are refugees or asylum-seekers.
1. What attracted you to working at WCC’s multilingual service for refugees & asylum-seekers?
I saw the opportunity to work with Spanish speakers and offer counselling in my native language
2. What do you think makes the multilingual service unique or special?
That takes in consideration the cultural and language diversity to match the clients with the counsellors that can offer sessions in clients own language.
3. What has been the most rewarding experience?
To see clients that overcome the emotional turmoil and learn how to deal with the emotions.
4. What is one thing you have learnt?
That working with short term contract is efficient and works for some cases
5. What are some of the challenges you faced?
To work in a short-term contract 12 sessions with complex cases.
6. How important is it that refugees, asylum-seekers & migrants can access multilingual and / or culturally-sensitive counselling?
Is very relevant to clients to have the space where they can feel a sense of belonging after the trauma related to refugee or migrant journey.
7. Looking ahead, what do you see as the most important areas for the service to focus on to continue effectively supporting this community?
Focus in the intersectionality