Addressing Barriers to Care and Inclusivity of Research with Deaf Individuals: A Data and Skills-Based Workshop

Access to social services and healthcare requires more than cost coverage and physical access. For individuals who are deaf, a range of barriers must be overcome in order to ensure safe, appropriate, and patient-centered care. Despite legal protections and interpreter requirements, clients for whom American Sign Language (ASL) is the first language are often faced with substantial communication and cultural barriers in every facet of seeking care, and research has largely marginalized this population or excluded them entirely. Issues related to aging, such as long-term care, cognitive capacity screening, guardianships, and emergency room care needs compound the social justice issues related to equity, empowerment, and personal agency, and social workers are called upon to step up our research, policy advocacy, and practice approaches to serve a growing demographic of vulnerable individuals.

This workshop includes a panel of three social workers: two healthcare social work research faculty, one of whom is a former ASL interpreter and mother of a deaf woman, and a recently graduated MSW who is deaf and is working towards licensure. They have been examining the role of social work research and pedagogy in the larger context of the professional knowledge base and will address several interrelated conference cluster areas in relation to available evidence, impacting social justice issues, and needed pedagogy and practice skills for working with deaf individuals. This panel crosses cluster areas related to Disability, Health, Mental Health, Aging Services and Gerontology, Structural Inequality and Social Welfare Policy.

The presenters will discuss the following topics: 1) What do we know about barriers to care and what do the data tell us about this issue at a national level? They will present data from a systematic review of the literature regarding aging and deafness, and national level data from the BRFSS study regarding intersections of aging and deafness in relation to barriers to accessing healthcare services. 2) What are the social justice implications and ethical imperatives to advancing the knowledge base on this issue? They will discuss the mandates of the Code of Ethics, the ADA and other legislation, and how variance in demographics can lead to marginalization of vulnerable populations, such as aging, dementia, and limited health literacy as risk factors for a growing demographic, and our professional mandate for advocacy and empowerment. The presenters will highlight areas where policy advocacy is needed. 3) Knowledge and skill development for social work researchers and educators; skills for engaging with deaf clients and colleagues, providing advocacy support, and recruiting for inclusive research will be provided. Barriers to recruiting deaf participants will be discussed, along with issues of intersectionality that are often excluded from such dialogues. The presenters will engage the audience in a discussion of recruiting deaf scholars into the social work clinical, research, and healthcare workforce, and pedagogical improvements that could be made to address this gap.

During a ninety-minute session, the panelists will address each of the topics in a prepared statement, then will engage in dialogue and activities with the audience.