Creciendo Juntos – Working Together

Human Services Working Group Meeting Notes

Thursday, March 15, 2007, 3 pm, United Way – High Street

Present: Jon Nafziger, Rhonda Miska, Maryfrances Porter, Sue Moffett, Kathy Klumpp, Yadira Weaver, Sally Lebeau

The meeting opened by congratulating ourselves for the successful January plenary meeting that our working group hosted.

Maryfrances Porter, a researcher for the Commission on Children and Families came to share about the research she is doing on community needs which will be used by the City and the County for strategic planning and figuring out local priorities. She has hosted focus groups and listening sessions to get input from those in the community and has specifically worked to get input from the elderly, low-income, African American and Latino populations in both the city and the county. She invited us to a community forum on Saturday, March 24 to give input. Along with the needs of housing and transportation, she shared that issues of access to mental health care and living wage issues had come up as major community needs. Maryfrances said that the results should be available in July and will be available to anyone who wants them and availed herself to Creciendo Juntos as a resource.

Sally LeBeau and Yadira Weaver from UVa Medical Services came to speak to our group about their work in Language Services at the hospital.

Their top five languages are Spanish, Russian, Farsi, sign, and Mandarin and they have 1,000 or more appointments a year in those five languages. The department has six full time Spanish interpreters and they have 30-50 appointments a day, over 1,500 Spanish-language visits annually which is continually increasing. Besides the full-time staff interpreters, they also contract with the IRC (International Rescue Committee) which averages ten visits a day and they also have a phone service called Cyracom which is used if there is no live interpreter. They are also tapping into the bilingual student population at UVa and have student volunteers take a proficiency test and then serve as interpreters. If a patient calls to make an appointment and is LEP, they are flagged as having a language need and are automatically internally marked to have an interpreter at all their appointments. If the patients speaks some English but isn’t fluent, they err on the side of caution and provide an interpreter. Children under age of 18 are not allowed to serve as interpreters, and if a patient brings in a bilingual family member, it is stressed that professional interpretation is better, and the patient must sign a waiver saying they refused a professional interpreter to have a family member translate. Due to the fact that bilingual staff are in and out of the office, calls may go to voicemail if staff are out of the office or on another phone line. The systems are in place but due to the rapidly increasing need of Spanish interpretation the systems are stressed.

Also, some documents (consent forms, etc) have been translated into Spanish. Quality Spanish-language informational sheets on health issues are also available to educate patients.

There is a diversity committee at the hospital working on areas of diversity. Language Services also is present at events such as the Spring Cultural Festival in Lee Park and the hospital’s Diversity Celebration to get the word out about their services.

The highest areas of Spanish-language visits are in obstetrics and pediatrics. Parents of newborns are given paperwork in Spanish that explain how to apply for a birth certificate. Many parents do not understand the process and Sally recommended community education to have parents apply for a birth certificate.

All staff are trained in how to use the Cyracom interpreter phones. There are also classes to teach nurses basic Spanish so they can converse with patients or ask simple questions.

In terms of the Emergency Room there is some bilingual staff in the ER who are present until 6:30 pm. There are also volunteer interpreters in the ER and the Cyracom phone is used. There are about 20 after hours ER visits a month which require interpretation from Spanish.

One idea that Sally presented for streamlining would be to publicize a centralized phone number where Spanish-speakers could make medical appointments. They get a lot of walk-ins, which is challenging.

2 days before an appointment, reminder phone calls are made in Spanish. Also, a letter is sent in English to remind about an appointment. The signs inside the hospital are in both English and Spanish. Martha Jefferson is working on language access services since they currently have no system in place to provide interpretation.

Sally recommended that if we hear of any problems with the interpretation services that she be contacted with the patient’s name and DOB or patient number to follow up.

There are three requirements for a CJ working group annually: hosting a plenary, having a community-wide event, and an agency staff training event. We have already hosted a plenary, our community event will be the Fall Help Fair, so there was some discussion on agency staff training. Sue suggested that we could educate on creating a community standard for “meaningful access” and best practices for providing it. Rhonda suggested staff training for agency staff members who don’t interact directly w/ Hispanics but who should have a basic understanding of immigration, Hispanic culture, etc.

The next CJ plenary is Friday, March 30 at 10 am and will focus on the Habitat for Humanity purchase of Southwood.

Our next Creciendo Juntos Working Group meeting will be Thursday, April 26 from 1-2:30 pm at the United Way building. At that meeting we will discuss our “agency training event.”