Research Review: How to Better Serve Culturally Diverse Clients

By Tylyn K. Johnson

People born and raised in the United States, including many social workers, tend to be monolingual English speakers.1 This may affect attitudes toward, and therefore the services provided to, folks from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds.

How can social workers and agencies better support CLD clients? This article examines several approaches that have been used to serve clients from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Strategies for Better Serving CLD Populations
The approaches used to improve services to CLD populations can be sorted into three categories: professional-oriented, environment-centered, and learning-focused.

Professional-Oriented
Professional-oriented strategies revolve around allocating human capital (ie, the talents and skills of social workers and/or other professionals) to meet clients’ needs.

The Use of Interpreters
Research shows that the presence of an interpreter doesn’t inherently reduce rapport building or increase deception, but it is important to establish clear expectations between workers, clients, and interpreters.2 This includes areas such as confidentiality and the flow of conversation.3 The interpreter should be sure to report client feelings, and the social worker has to be comfortable asking open-ended and/or probing questions.4

Of course, it is necessary for workers, agencies, and clients to balance who should provide interpretation services. This will inevitably vary depending on the resources [people and/or funds] available to support, and plans should be made accordingly. Interpreters may be the following:

• certified professionals;
• members of clients’ support networks;5
• trained volunteers;6 and
• in-house bilingual/bicultural social workers.7

Collaborations Between Monolingual and Multilingual Professionals
While hiring and supporting multilingual, multicultural social workers is important, monolingual professionals should work alongside their multilingual peers to engage in multilingual practice. For multilingual workers, agencies have to support burnout-prevention for workers in order to maintain/improve service for CLD clients, especially given how multilingual professionals can help clients feel understood and their needs met in a culturally competent manner.5,8,9 One way of balancing the workload is to have monolingual social workers lead service provision, with their bilingual counterparts providing support and interpretation.7 And generally, all social work professionals need to be engaging in training that deepens their understanding of multilingual practice, where monolingual or otherwise.

Environment-Centered
Environment-centered interventions involve cultivating atmospheres that are welcoming and inclusive toward linguistic diversity.

Accessibility of Informational Literature
When an agency lack literature in clients’ native languages, clients are left feeling uninformed about the resources and strategies for their presenting problems.10 Pamphlets, resource sheets, and other client-facing documents should be made available in clients’ various languages as a means of providing baseline support and respect for the communities we serve. To that point, it should be noted that this is only a first step for cultivating linguistically inclusive environments.11 Agency spaces should support language accessibility in as many ways as feasible.

Increasing Language Diversity in Agencies
It is important not just to appreciate the language range of clients but also to challenge the “default monolingualism” in agencies and biases against accents. Embracing agency-level multilingualism through various strategies of promotion and engagement, such as through workshops or material support for in-house multilingualism, may empower CLD professionals to be more authentic.12,13 Promoting language diversity between agency professionals may even facilitate new opportunities for peer-learning.12

Learning-Focused
Learning-focused strategies seek to better support CLD clients through the use of subject and/or skills-based learning by professionals and/or clients.

Updating Social Work Education
Social work students should be discussing language work in their coursework to recognize the sociopolitical implications of the field centering on a monolingual English experience, which is tied to the systemic oppressions against many minoritized groups.13 This may involve having students develop competence in languages aside from English or even developing workshops that prepare social workers from various linguistic backgrounds to effectively support CLD clients.14,15 It is important to prevent workers from viewing CLD clients as having a “communication deficiency,” which is likely to harm how workers view and serve clients.16

Language-Learning by Clients
Language-learning can create added difficulties and conflicts in clients’ lives,17 for a variety of reasons:

• inadequate language instruction;
• weak interpretive services;
• the tensions of cultural and linguistic assimilation;
• acclimating to new geographies (physical and cultural); and
• generational differences to language-learning in the family.

If social workers and agencies wish to support clients in language-learning for their survival, then it might be worth exploring how agencies can create space(s) for clients to practice and develop new language skills in ways that center them. One example found in research is through social entrepreneurship, wherein a coffee shop was created that hires and transitions Yemeni refugees into their new context.18 However, it should be noted that this strategy may place greater onus on already-struggling clients to improve agencies’ service. Therefore, it would likely be best for agencies to support the mutual aid endeavors of CLD communities already pursuing this type of endeavor, rather than trying to jumpstart any such endeavors.

Final Note
These interventions and strategies reflect established and experimental approaches to serving CLD populations. To be effective, social workers should consider language a complex and tangible aspect of clients’ lives. Social workers are trained to talk with clients through their issues, which includes navigating the fluid nature and experience of language. A common thread in the discussed strategies is open and clear communication between social workers and CLD clients. To that point, agencies must host environments that actively support and engage with language difference and diversity. Elsewise, the profession will be restricting itself from serving a sonically colorful world, perpetuating a linguistic violence upon users of oppressed languages and vernaculars.

— Tylyn K. Johnson (he/they) is an Honors BSW graduate from the University of Indianapolis who honors the tradition of empowerment they come from through the glasses of Black and queer artistry. Their language has appeared in Queen Spirit Magazine, Etchings literary magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, and Rigorous, among other spaces. They also earned the 2021 Myong Cha Son Haiku Award.

References
1. Lufkin B. What is the future of English in the US? BBC Worklife website. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180808-what-is-the-future-of-english-in-the-us. Published August 8, 2018.

2. Ewens S, Vrij A, Leal S, Mann S, Jo E, Fisher RP. The effect of interpreters on eliciting information, cues to deceit and rapport. Legal Criminol Psychol. 2016;21:286-304.

3. Westlake D, Jones RK. Breaking down language barriers: a practice-near study of social work using interpreters. Br J Soc Work. 2018;48:1388-1408.

4. Glasser I. Guidelines for using an interpreter in social work. Child Welfare. 1983;62(5):468-470.

5. Yeung EYW, Partridge M, Irvine F. Satisfaction with social care: the experiences of people from Chinese backgrounds with physical disabilities. Health Soc Care Community. 2016;24(6):144-154.

6. Kamimura A, Ashby J, Myers K, Nourian MM, Christensen N. Satisfaction with healthcare services among free clinic patients. J Community Health. 2014;40:62-72.

7. Lanesskog D. “The only thing we can do is treat them well here”: public health with Latinos in a new immigrant destination. Soc Work Public Health. 2018;33(6):382-395.

8. Liu S. Bilingual social workers in mental health service provision: cultural competence, language, and work experience. Asian Social Work and Policy Review. 2013;7:85-98.

9. Paris M, Anez LM, Bedregal LE, Andres-Hyman RC, Davidson L. Help seeking and satisfaction among Latinas: the roles of setting, ethnic identity, and therapeutic alliance. J Community Psychol. 2005;33(3):299-312.

10. Culley LA, Hudson N, Rapport FL, Katbamna S, Johnson MRD. British South Asian communities and infertility services. Hum Fertil. 2006;9(1):37-45.

11. Greenwood N, Habibi R, Smith R, Manthorpe J. Barriers to access and minority ethnic carers’ satisfaction with social care services in the community: a systematic review of qualitative and quantitative literature. Health Soc Care Community. 2015;23(1):64-78.

12. Kim R, Roberson L, Russo M, Briganti P. Language diversity, nonnative accents, and their consequences at the workplace: recommendations for individuals, teams, and organizations. Journal Appl Behav Sci. 2019;55(1):73-95.

13. Harrison G. Broadening the conceptual lens on language in social work: difference, diversity and English as a global language. Br J Soc Work. 2006;36:401-408.

14. Hall J, Valdiviezo S. The social worker as language worker in a multilingual world: educating for language competence. Journal of Social Work Education. 2019;56(1):17-29.

15. Doering-White J, Pinto RM, Bramble RM, Ibarra-Frayre M. Teaching note—critical issues for language interpretation in social work practice. J Soc Work Educ. 2019;56(2):401-408.

16. Russell MN, White B. Social worker and immigrant client experiences in multicultural service provision: educational implications. Social Work Education. 2002;21(6):635-650.

17. Nelson D, Price E, Zubrzycki J. Integrating human rights and trauma frameworks in social work with people from refugee backgrounds. Australian Social Work. 2014;67(4):567-581.

18. Kong E. Building social and community cohesion: the role of social enterprises in facilitating settlement experiences for immigrants from non-English speaking backgrounds. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. 2011;6(3):115-128.