QUESTION
How does the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection provide language access at outreach events and for worker education?
0:39:10
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63 sec
The Assistant Commissioner explains that half of the agency's staff speaks a language other than English, and between those staff members, they speak 44 languages, allowing them to leverage multilingual employees for events requiring language access.
- They utilize vendors to provide in-person interpretation services.
- The agency has access to a language line for handling complaints filed in the field.
- Partnerships with community-based organizations that speak the languages of local communities are important for facilitating education and receiving complaints.
Julie Menin
0:39:10
In terms of the outreach events that council member Brea was asking about, you mentioned there's 150 a year.
0:39:16
How many are done in multiple languages?
0:39:20
And can you talk about language access?
Carlos Ortiz
0:39:23
I I do have the numbers but I can't for a link for events done in other languages that just don't have them with me, but I will get that to you.
0:39:30
I think across the agency let's say on the average team itself, we have, I think, 7 languages spoken.
0:39:36
Across the agency, half of our staff speaks a language other than English covering about 44 languages.
0:39:43
So we're certainly able to leverage those folks strategically to bring them to situations where we need more language access.
0:39:50
On top of that, we do have our vendors that we will bring out to to bring in person interpretation.
0:39:55
And certainly to when we wanna develop complaints in the field, we we have access to language line too.
0:40:02
But typically, our our partnerships with community based organizations are very important in this circumstance as well.
0:40:06
We are working with community both organizations in the community that's speak those languages too, and they also help us facilitate education and complaints.