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BACKGROUND
Hablamos Juntos encourages grantees to identify community-based
solutions to reduce the language barrier facing Latinos with
limited English proficiency (LEP) in health care. The Workforce
Investment Act (WIA) can be an important pillar in building a
community wide effort to address this issue. This broad approach
to enhancing language capacity incorporates the elements served
by this federal legislation. This legislation seeks to create
a national workforce preparation and employment system that meets
the needs of job seekers and those seeking to advance their careers
along with the needs of the nation’s employers. The opportunities
for grantees fall in two general areas. First, securing federal/state
support for language capacity enhancement through training programs
in the health and allied health professions. These may include
training programs to develop an interpreter workforce or adjunct
programs to train health professionals develop language capacity
to work with LEP populations and interpreters. Second, mobilizing
local health professions schools and other institutions through
the local WIA councils to address issues of language access as
part of the community’s long term and strategic planning
process. This may include establishing language enhancement components
or medical interpreter programs through health professions schools
or community colleges and may expand to address the language
needs of other local business and social agencies. The following
provides a history of the WIA, an example of how one State has
developed health care training programs under the WIA, and a
listing of local resources for the ten states that have an Hablamos
Juntos demonstration site.
HISTORY
The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) was signed into law by President
Clinton on August 7, 1998 to replace the Adult Education Act.
The signing marked the first major job training reform in over
15 years. WIA was passed to reform the nation’s job training
system that formerly was fragmented, contained duplicative programs,
and did not serve either job seekers or employers well. Full
implementation for all states was to be completed by July 1,
2000. The goal of WIA is to integrate welfare, unemployment compensation,
employment services, and training into one seamless system of
public assistance reform.
The WIA calls for states to apply a "work first" concept
to the use of federally funded job training efforts. One-stop centers
are intended to serve the locally defined needs of both adults
and youths seeking work. Among other things, it encourages states
to tie training efforts closely to the employment orientation of
the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Food Stamp,
Dislocated Worker, and Unemployment Insurance programs. The goal
is a continued decline in the need for public assistance for those
able to work.
Title II of the Act reauthorized the Adult Education
and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) through 2003. The AEFLA is designed
to assist
adults (1) to become literate and obtain the knowledge and skills
necessary for employment and self-sufficiency; (2) who are parents
to obtain the educational skills necessary to become full partners
in the educational development of their children; and (3) to complete
a secondary school education.
Congress is scheduled to reauthorize
WIA in 2003. The Administration is currently working on a number
of initiatives designed to inform
the reauthorization process. Grantees are encouraged to learn
more about how their states are positioned on this issue and consider
its implications for the development of a labor pool to fill
needs
for interpreters in health care settings.
The Workforce Innovation
Networks’ (WINs) initiative seeks
to connect business organizations with employers, educators, training
providers, community organizations, and social service providers.
WINs have two goals: help employers meet their workforce needs
and help low-income individuals advance their skills and obtain
family-supporting jobs. Grantees may find it worthwhile to actively
engage in these discussions locally.
Other Key Components of the
Workforce Investment Act include:
- Streamlining Services
Programs and providers will co-locate,
coordinate, and integrate activities and information, creating
a coherent and accessible
one-stop system for individuals
and businesses.
- Empowering Individuals
Individual Training Accounts (ITA’s)
at qualified institutions will supplement financial aid from
other sources and may pay for all the costs
of training. A system of consumer reports will provide key information on the
performance outcomes of training and education providers.
- Universal Access
Any job seeker in the US who wants to advance
his or her career will have access to the one-stop system and
core employment-related
services.
- Increased Accountability
State and local entities managing
the workforce investment system must meet core indicators of
performance, or suffer
sanctions. Through ITA’s,
participants choose training based on program outcomes. To survive in the
market, training
providers must make accountability for performance a top priority.
Healthcare Workforce Opportunities
The state of Maryland has made use of this legislation
and provides funds to educate and train individuals in several
health professions.
Through WIA funding, Maryland has designated Occupational Training
programs that are eligible for reimbursement. These programs are
available at various community colleges throughout the state. Some
of the health care workforce areas that qualify include chemical
dependency counseling, EKG technician, dental assistant and hygienist,
pharmacy technician, gerontology, medical billing and coding, venipuncture,
phlebotomy, and nursing assistant. Funding for the training programs
is provided to eligible individuals through WIA Individual Training
Accounts. Funds for the WIA Title I program flow from the United
States Department of Labor through the Department of Labor, Licensing,
and Regulation/Office of Employment Training (DLLR/OET). The OET,
using a formula based on the population mix in each locality, allocates
the WIA funds to Workforce Investment Areas throughout the State.
A Workforce
Investment Area is a region with 200,000 or more residents and
a common labor pool.
Each investment area is required to have a Local Workforce Investment
Board (LWIB). By law, each LWIB is chaired by a businessperson
and comprised of a majority of private sector representatives,
business owners, chief executives, managers, and policy makers.
Other LWIB members are drawn from public job service, education,
social services, rehabilitation, and economic development agencies,
as well as from organized labor and community based organizations.
The
local boards in Maryland develop job training programs for implementation
in their respective areas, oversee the operation
of those programs, and determine which companies, educational
institutions, and community organizations will receive funding
for program operation.
The WIA cooperates with local employers and government to select
the workforce development programs most beneficial to the region,
and to tailor programs to meet the local employment training
needs.
Given this example, medical interpretation training,
if defined as a program that would most benefit a region, may become
an eligible
and approved area for training support through WIA in the grantee
states. Representatives of the grantee sites and multiple community
partners may already participate in the LWIB and may be positioned
to inform the board of the growing need for trained interpreters
in health care.
Click
on one of the states below to learn more about WIA as it applies
to the Hablamos Juntos demonstration
sites:
|Alabama | California | Nebraska | Pennsylvania | Rhode Island|
|South
Carolina | Tennessee | Texas | Virginia | Washington|
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* External link
For more information, call the National Program Office at (213) 743-155
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