Council Member Ung questions DHS on language access in grievances
Ung asks how non-English speakers navigate grievances. Fellini says shelters must comply with language access policy and have a 24-hour language line; DHS does not track provider staff language capabilities but encourages diverse staff.
To Councilmember Ong, followed by Councilmember Nurse, and then Councilmember Aviles.
And we've been joined by Councilmember Aviles.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner, for your testimony today.
So I do have a question about the language capabilities of shelters.
If your client where English is not their first language, how do they go through the grievance procedure, either written or oral?
And then how does the message get communicated back to the client?
Thank you for the question.
All shelters are required to comply with the language access policy and all have access to DHS's language line contract to be able to communicate with every single client 24 hours a day.
If it were the grievance process, just like with any form, staff would use the language line to make sure the client understood the form, talk through that, help record the response.
The form would live.
In English back to the shelter staff or to DHS, and the language line could assist with making sure that the client understood what the process is.
Okay, is there any, and I appreciate the language line, always do appreciate the language line, but is there any effort
you know, depending on where the shelter is, the community that is in the shelter system, the language they speak, is there any effort to, you know, hire people in the shelter that speaks that language?
Of course.
And we want our providers to make sure that there's a diverse shelter staff.
So, yes.
Okay.
Is there, okay, I mean, is there any statistics on this, any examples of this that can be helpful and, like, for me to understand a little bit more of what is going on?
Yeah, we don't track the language capability of provider staff, but it's something we could certainly look into.
Great.
And there is an effort to communicate to providers that, you know, that it should be the language, hopefully the language that, you know, that, you know, that's, that actually is spoken in that shelter.
Yes.
And we have communi cards, which make it easy for clients to indicate to staff what language they speak so that saves some time and not back and forth.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.