Bilinguals Serving Latinx Families in Child Welfare

Background and Purpose: Latinx families involved with the child welfare system face significant challenges due to language barriers. These families must engage with an unfamiliar government entity to avoid separation, yet many struggle to receive appropriate services due to limited English proficiency. Access to these services should be achievable for all, regardless of language proficiency. However, public services remain inaccessible to many LEP individuals. The need for bilingual social workers is rapidly increasing as they are essential in delivering equitable services to diverse communities. Despite active recruitment efforts, burnout and turnover among bilingual social workers persist. This paper explores the experiences of bilingual child welfare social workers serving Latinx families throughout California.

Methods: This qualitative cross-sectional study was guided by three research questions: 1. What is working well for bilingual social workers in child welfare? 2. What challenges do bilingual child welfare social workers face at their agencies? 3. What type of support do bilingual child welfare social workers need? Semi-structured interviews were conducted virtually with 13 social workers employed by a public child welfare agency in California and who identified as bilingual in English and Spanish. A purposive snowball sampling method was utilized to recruit participants, ensuring a diverse representation of bilingual social workers. Data was collected through hour-long virtual interviews on Zoom. Demographic data was recorded, cleaned, and analyzed through Qualtrics software, while interviews were transcribed with Otter.ai and analyzed using an inductive thematic approach. The data was triangulated with two additional graduate students experienced in qualitative research for internal validity.

Results: Positive experiences among bilingual social workers included connections and support provided by their agencies, such as outside translation services, translated materials, and access to bilingual supervisors. Challenges included extra tasks for bilingual social workers and a shortage of Spanish-speaking professionals. Analysis identified a need for informational, emotional, and tangible support from agencies to better prepare bilingual social workers for success in providing services to Spanish-speaking families. A common finding was the belief that funding should be dedicated to community providers and services in Spanish to ensure monolingual families have the same access as English-speaking families. The lack of community services available in Spanish was considered a disservice to Latinx families, contributing to prolonged cases and failed reunifications.

Conclusion and Implications: Being a bilingual social worker in child welfare involves more than interpreting and translating languages; it means playing a vital role in serving marginalized communities like the Latinx population. The data demonstrates that serving Latinx families, especially those not fluent in English, requires cultural interpretation and translation. Child welfare agencies should focus on recruiting, retaining, and promoting bilingual social workers. The study's data shows that many bilingual social workers face challenges due to a lack of training or bilingual supervisors at their agencies. Agencies should develop and implement training and professional development for bilingual staff and educate non-bilingual workers on the challenges, inequalities, and systemic barriers faced by Latinx families. Additionally, raising awareness about the role of bilingual workers in mitigating these barriers is essential.