Advocacy

The Advocacy/Legal Issues Committee is a newly created group aimed at helping provide a forum to discuss and address a number of issues affecting the Latino Community in Central Ohio.

Committee Chair

The goals of the meeting are the following.

1. Bring attention to the issue
2. Get a sense of leg/board of regents/gov/community members/etc positions on the issue
3. Facilitate collaboration among Latino organizations and get a sense of how different orgs/individuals will take a part in the process of pushing/implementing initiatives
4. Brainstorm on how we might draw in others
   
   

Please look for an upcoming email regarding the date of this event. We will soon have a meeting with the core hosting group to set a date and plan for the dialogue further.

Also, we are in the research stages of trying to find out what types of language access there is generally in the Police Department.

Past accomplishments

On February 9 earlier this year the advocacy committee hosted a meeting regarding 911 Access for LEP callers. The goal of the meeting was to determine how we could fascilitate access for LEP callers to 911. At the time we had done some research and determined that Franklin County had no system in place for addressing non-English calls.

We had also done some other preliminary advocacy work, including emailing the Franklin County call center to request a meeting and tour, and attending the Franklin County Public Safety Answering Point Managers Meeting. Following the Feb 9 meeting, we were able to get the attention of our public officials who then requested a meeting. Ruben Herrera and I met with Franklin County Sheriff Jim Karnes and County Administrator Don Brown, among others. At this meeting, it was agreed that Franklin County would attempt to pass a resolution directing all of the PSAPs in Franklin County to have a language line. At the time, only about half had a language access system in place.

A couple weeks later, a tragedy occured regarding a four-year old who drowned in a retention pond. After this occured, it was then that Franklin County understood the gravity of our proposal. Franklin County immediately subscribed to a language line, as they had promised LEON a couple weeks earlier, and the Franklin County Commissioenrs began to initiate the process to pass a resolution to have all PSAPS maintain a language line. This was passed in early June.

Following this, the advocacy committee has requested a follow up meeting with Commissioner Paula Brooks and Administrator Don Brown. A letter was sent to them in early July outlining 3 concerns we still have:

1. The language line's business procedure for accessing the caller's account
2. Cultural learning opportunities
3. Quality of interpretation. We are hoping that after six months to a year following Franklin County's implementation of a language line, they will provide us with the data (which is sent to them by the language line operator) regarding how many calls they receive monthly to determine a need for addittional access (such as a bilingual dispatcher).