LANGUAGE ACCESS IN THE VOCATIONAL SYSTEM IN ILLINOIS: A CAPACITY-BUILDING EFFORT Co-Authors: John Capua, MPH Candidate, Apeksha Gohil, OTD Candidate, Raveena Kingra, Sana Menon GIS & Graphic Design: Christopher Tran, MUPP Candidate Project Investigators: Rooshey Hasnain, EdD, Tamara Kozyckyj, MPH, Jae Jin Pak, BS Co-Partner: Francisco Alvarado, MD, MS, Assistant Director of DRS-VR
ADOPT’S Mission ADOPT is a collaborative outreach project that is based in communities and informed by research. Its mission is to connect working-age Asian, immigrants, and refugees who have disabilities to culturally and linguistically appropriate VR supports & services so that they can gain access to meaningful employment.
Job Seekers with Disabilities Who Are Limited English Proficient (LEP) and English Language Learners (ELL): A Diverse and Underserved Community • Many LEP and ELL people with disabilities of various ethnic, cultural, and racial backgrounds have difficulty accessing vocational rehabilitation (VR) services, mainly because of the systemic cultural and language barriers that exist. Asians are particularly affected and hindered from utilizing VR. • ADOPT’s ongoing intent is to help the state VR system increase its capacity to support the access of disabled Asians,immigrants, and refugees to employment opportunities through culturally and linguistically appropriate mechanisms. • To strengthen our understanding of language access needs and opportunities for disabled LEP/ELL workers, ADOPT has been collaborating with DRS, many local Asian-oriented agencies, Asian-owned or managed businesses, and key city stakeholders.
Illinois Department of Human Services
Building Linkages to Meet Language Needs
Illinois Employment/VR Disparity
ADOPT has established a strong network of Chicago-based outreach multicultural partners that link to immigrant, refugee, and disability communities that are LEP/ELLs. These include:
In June 2014, only 35% of Illinois residents with disabilities ages 21 to 64 were working, while 69% of nondisabled adults were employed. (ODEP, 2015)
~Asian Human Services, Chinese Mutual Aid Association, MAHA, CASL, Heartland Human Care Services and EL Valor~
Asian American Research Challenges
ADOPT has achieved the following: • Worked to include more AAWDs in outreach partners’ programming and staffing. • Helped DRS to connect to underserved Asian communities, families, and individuals for the first time. • Established new links to native-born and foreign-born Asians in Chicago through outreach and educational efforts. • Brought together Asian immigrant community leaders, university researchers, and VR providers to help identify culutrally sensitive solutions to language-related employment and VR barriers.
• Asians in the U.S. have a wide variety of cultures, religions, and cultural beliefs and speak more than a hundred languages and dialects.
Characteristics of Current Asian VR Clients Due to the high concentration of AAWDs who are LEP/ELL in the Chicago-area, DRS-VR needs to provide more culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach efforts to this underserved group
Percent of Asian Speakers who are Limited in English Proficiency Arabic: Other Pacific Island languages: Tagalog:
LEP/ELL Statistics: • 5.25% of the overall population • 5.8% of them live in the greater Chicago area • ~15% of them have disabilities (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013)
Other Asian languages: Vietnamese: Laotian: Thai: Hmong: Mon-Khmer, Cambodian: Korean:
Development and Administration of On-Line Surveys to Assess Current Language Access Activities Across Illinois
Japanese: Chinese:
Hindi:
Impact of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Mapping On Language Access Activities
Gujarati: Persian: 0
Geographic information systems (GIS) maps help to highlight the ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity of various neighborhoods in greater Chicago
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Chicago city, Illinois % LEP
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Cook County, Illinois % LEP
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Illinois % LEP
Ethnic/Racial Trends Analysis
Language Barriers to VR & Employment
• ADOPT has established a strong grassroots network of Chicago-based immigrant and disability groups to support AAWDs who are striving to achieve self-sufficiency, community integration, and a better quality of life.
• Recent reports indicate that LEP and ELL Asian Americans with disabilities (AAWDs) in Illinois are increasing in number and diversity, thus posing new cultural and language challenges for the state VR system.
• ADOPT’s success is measured through the increased number of people with disabilities who are LEP/ELL using DRS and through the establishment of these new provider partnerships that address language and communication needs.
• Disabled LEP and ELL Asian job seekers with the g r e a t e s t employment needs are often difficult to reach and therefore severely underserved.
Illinois
• Audio-recorded many of the translated languages as an alternative mechanism to address literacy issues of LEO/ELL customers.
• DRS, in partnership with ADOPT, is starting to reach out to LEP/ELL populations and the Asian American community
Urdu:
• This number is alarmingly low since as many as 4% of working-age Asians in Illinois have disabilities (ACS, 2012).
• Revised and translated the DRS-VR fact sheet into 14 languages in partnership with trained language vendors.
• The lack of disaggregated data can perpetuate the model minority myth—that Asians are the healthy minority who are intelligent, successful, and free of needs or problems—and thereby prevent LEP and ELL people from obtaining needed VR resources.
Other Indic languages:
0.99%
• Advocated for the addition of a language preference item for an online referral form.
• Such myths keep many disabled Asians outside the VR system, which could help them find meaningful employment. In addition, the VR system itself is a source of disparity in services because of cultural and institutional factors. • Mainstream VR systems in Illinois lack mechanisms to support AAWDs who are LEP or ELL because of their cultural beliefs and the stigma associated with disability and mental illness in many of their home cultures.
For many working-age AAWDs, language and lack of social capital limits their families' and communities' involvement in their VR experience. Yet such engagement—the product of effective outreach activities—can play an important role in promoting workforce success among this overlooked population.
• AAWDS who are LEP and ELL are highly underrepresented in the Illinois VR system: less than 1% are served by the state VR system.
Actions to Improve Language Access
• These charts show the increase in new foreign-born VR clients from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds across eight years (from 2004 to 2012).
This map shows the new location of the North Broadway Office.
ADOPT has developed two language access surveys for VR counselors/staff and supervisors to assess current VR language access activities and to develop recommendations. The survey items pertain to: • Frequency of encounters with LEP/ELL customers • Tracking VR-centered policies of customers’ preferred language • Current case management practices pertaining to language access needs • Common barriers to assessing language needs • Tools, training, and resources that VR offices need to improve VR access and outcomes for customers who are LEP/ELL
A Language Access Success Story • For 18 years, a Bhutanese refugee with a significant hearing impairment lived in a refugee camp in Nepal. In August of 2009, she resettled in Chicago with her brothers. ADOPT discovered that she was not aware of DRS or of the possibility of working in this country. • Through ADOPT’s outreach efforts, she was connected to a VR office, a counselor, and a Hindi-speaking interpreter from the ADOPT team; they worked with her, her family, and a South Asian community agency to connect her to an on-the-job training program at a major hotel. This kind of outreach effort can help other Illinois-based Asians who are not aware of VR services and supports.