Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act assures that individuals with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), who receive federal funded insurance, (i.e. Medicare and Medicaid), obtain “meaningful access” to health and social services through use of any language assistance they need in order to access those services. However, LEP patients have lower odds of receiving needed healthcare services and receive poorer quality mental health treatment and healthcare treatment in general. While language barriers exist throughout healthcare, this presentation will focus specifically to elucidate the magnitude of this barrier as it exists in long-term care settings, survey existing interventions and their effectiveness, and discuss how to advocate for this marginalized population.

Workshop Objectives

• Define the magnitude of language barriers as it exists in the U.S. healthcare system.
• Learn about specific challenges that exacerbate language barriers within long-term care settings.
• Frame language barriers in healthcare as an ethical and civil rights violation. 
• Survey existing interventions to address language barriers and their effectiveness. 
• Explore how social workers can advocate for individuals with LEP in healthcare settings.  

About the Speaker

Max Sleep-Frankel (he/him) is an LCSW based in Los Angeles providing individual, family, and group psychotherapy in long-term care settings for MPAC Healthcare. He is also responsible for helping new clinicians succeed through helping with onboarding as they enter this post-acute space. He graduated with a master’s in social work from the University of Chicago with a focus on clinical social work and older adult studies. Since graduation, he has committed himself to advocating and serving older adults and adults with disabilities as a guardian, case manager, and now a mental health counselor. Max has witnessed the need for mental health counseling in long-term settings as a way of helping individuals deal with the many adjustments that beset their life during this tough transition. He is pursuing his doctorate of social work this fall at the University of Alabama and will be concentrating his studies in organizational leadership. He hopes to pursue this topic further through his capstone project.