Improving Services and Outreach to the Latino Community

This document from the Women's Justice Center's Marie De Santis is meant to give social service organisations perspective, context, and answers to questions about how to improve services and outreach to the Latino community. The authors point out that because Latinos are a diverse people, coming from more than 24 countries and from a wide range of social, economic, and racial spectrums, there is not one easy answer. This document attempts to examine some of the underlying complexity in the underserved Latino population and give some recommended practices through the context of lessons learned through improving violence-against-women services to Latino communities.

The author's first recommendation for organisations wishing to service a Latino population is on-going, scheduled programme evaluation that includes consulting Latino co-workers, clients, and community in what is working - and what is not - in serving Latinos. A second recommendation is developing solutions to problems identified in the evaluation process by lifting obstacles, rather than using them as excuses to under serve. For example, an analysis of hidden barriers to access of services and clients' fears of access might lead to new methods and service deliveries that take into account the dilemmas faced by a rural, decentralised, potentially undocumented, non-English-speaking population.

De Santis' third recommendation is that all employees hired to serve clients need to be prepared to serve all clients. The document emphasises that hiring Latinos/as to serve the Latino community potentially results in "a harmful ghettoizing of services..." At the same time, those who are not Spanish speakers in an organisation, according to this document, need to continue to be part of the professional services offered to all - including Spanish speaking - clients, through organisational policies and practices such as: contracting professionally competent interpreters; training staff to work with them; using a telephone interpreter service; expecting that bilingual staff will fulfil their professional obligations, not interpret for others; and committing throughout the organisation to work across language barriers as a priority and hiring requirement written into all job descriptions.

The fourth recommendation is to turn a vision of social change into organisational change by reworking job descriptions and requirements to add skills and experience that suit the organisational vision and then publicise them in new recruiting patterns including the internet. De Santis suggests designing hiring processes with care, including having interpreters tested professionally.

Next, the recommendation is to know the finer demographic details of the client population and include cultural familiarity in office environments and services. Further, the document recommends eliminating harmful stereotypes among staff members and giving them training to cross linguistic and cultural barriers, as well as training for expertise in knowing obstacles that block Latinas from liberation from violence.

The article concludes with five communication tips to reach the Latino communities: Hand out cards in supermarkets, use Spanish language radio stations, put literature in family planning clinics or obstetrician/gynaecologist clinics; set up a bilingual website; and use English as a second language (ESL) classes to reach people, educate them, and recruit for employment.