Vol. 48, No. 6, June 2003

Agencies Ill-Prepared as Population Grows

Services in Spanish Unavailable to Many

Nearly 14 million Spanish-speaking people speak English “less than very well.”

By John V. O’Neill, MSW, News Staff

Illustration: John Michael Yanson

Many social workers have seen or heard about Spanish-speaking clients talking to mental health professionals while their sensitive stories were being interpreted by their children, or perhaps by maintenance personnel, because there was no bilingual, professional staff available.

That sort of treatment is professionally and ethically questionable, say experts on cultural competence. And it may be ending soon because of an executive order, issued first by the Clinton administration and allowed to stand by the Bush administration, requiring federal agencies and contractors who receive federal money to provide professional services in languages clients understand.

In the opinion of experts across the country in states with Latino populations large and small, social workers and their agencies are far from prepared. As the number of Latinos in the United States rapidly grows, they say, the ability of the social work profession to provide culturally competent services to them in their native languages is lagging far behind.

Nobody knows for sure, however, because nobody on either a national or state level has collected workforce data on the supply and demand for Spanish-speaking social workers, say experts in the field. “No funding source or entity is responsible, so nobody is studying it in a methodological way,” said Luisa Lopez, NASW affirmative action manager.

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