Bilingual counseling training program was started by the Hsinchu City Department of Labour and Service the People Association to help the migrant worker who suffer from physical and mentally illness. The program helps the translator with the ability to help the counselor and the migrant worker in a second language. The program has been training translators with counseling ability in Indonesian, Vietnamese, Filipino and Thai languages since September 2019. There are 26 graduated trainees in November (7 in Indonesian, 11 in Vietnamese, 7 in Filipino and 1 in Thai). Until now, there are 46 trainees in total who has graduated from the training since the program started.
Director of the New Taipei City Department of Labour, Chen stated that the program started from 2018, not only do they want to train people with the ability of translation, but also express the idea of counseling more precisely and professionally. It is also important for them to be more sensible to the migrant worker’s culture and background in order to build trust with them.
The training is 42 hours long including the basic idea of mental health, stress management, counseling skills and compassion skills. After somes exercise, group meetings and passing the oral test, they will be graduated. In the future, Department of Labour will provide the list of those trained translators in the police station and the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Center in order to help more people.
The program has been highly recommended by the trainee and the trainer for the good intention of the official to start up this program. Hope the training program will still be continued in the future to provide more bilingual counseling services for the migrant worker. Good news is the training program will still continue next year. For further information and keep track on the news, please go to Department of Labour facebook page.
