Diversity Fellow Project, Yali Pang
Lifting the Voices of Families through Cultural Brokering
Cultural brokers have been used as an effective tool in the healthcare industry for increasing the capacity of providers to design and implement culturally and linguistically competent health and mental health services. However, the effectiveness of a cultural broker model for providing appropriate, culturally sensitive and collaborative parent-to-parent support to diverse families of children with disabilities has not been extensively explored. This presentation will discuss critical components and key steps of cultural brokering when supporting families raising children with disabilities, highlight research-based cultural brokering models, and identify challenges in cultural brokering practice.
Lifting the Voices of Families through Cultural Brokering (poster) [download]
Project Narrative
1. Please describe your activities during your Fellowship experience. Describe your final capstone project(s).
During my Fellowship, l expanded my knowledge about disabilities and services and supports such as early intervention, special education, mental health and family involvement. I attended conferences such as Connect for Success, Refugee Mental Health Summit and trainings like Person Centered Thinking. Also, I participated in staff meetings with staff of the Center for Family Involvement (CFI) and the Partnership for People with Disabilities; met department and project leaders; interviewed leaders of our DD partner organizations; and worked on the capstone project.
The focus of my capstone project (pre-chosen by the Partnership’s leadership team) was the CFI’s cultural brokering model. Health and mental health service providers have increasingly used cultural brokering as an intervention to provide culturally sensitive services. However, the practice of cultural brokering as an evidenced-informed parent-to-parent support to diverse families raising children with disabilities is still emerging. The Partnership’s CFI has used cultural brokers since 2009. In an effort to clearly define the role of cultural brokers and identify the core components of the practice, this project undertook a study to identify and clarify the essential elements of cultural brokering through literature review and interviews with key informants in the disability field, and explore discrepancies between the existing cultural brokering models and cultural brokers’ practice.
2. Who did your project inform, help, influence or impact? (UCEDD, individual, community, state) How?
The Capstone project has different levels of impact. At the micro level, my research project will increase the knowledge and awareness of CFI leadership and its cultural brokers who provide emotional, informational and systems navigational support to diverse families of children with disabilities by tightening up cultural brokers’ roles and responsibilities. At the organizational level, findings from the project will increase understanding of the evidenced informed practices of how cultural brokers can be used to support the unique needs of culturally and linguistically diverse families who have children with disabilities that come into contact with any Partnership project. At the macro level, my research project will inform the disability field, particularly parent-to-parent and family-to-family organizations on practices to better provide support that meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse families of children with disabilities in their community and state.
In addition, based on the feedback of CFI cultural brokers, resources and materials will be collected and housed on cultural brokering, cultural difference, and cultural sensitivity, which will help not only build the knowledge of the CFI cultural brokers but also increase cultural awareness and cultural competency of other Partnership and CFI staff .
3. Why did you choose to work on that project(s)?
When the Partnership began drafting their application to AIDD for a Diversity Fellow grant, the organization’s leadership team identified the CFI’s cultural broker initiative as the capstone research project, because the project had grown from two brokers in 2009 to five brokers in 2016 and each broker appeared to do their job differently. If the CFI was going to use an evidence informed intervention with families, we needed to better understand cultural brokering in the context of parent to parent support and how to tighten up the roles and activities of the brokers.
Even though cultural brokering has been increasingly used as an effective intervention in serving families raising children with disabilities these years, there is still a lack of complete and uniform understanding of cultural brokering and the use cultural brokers in direct service. While the CFI had a generic job description for cultural brokers, it is was very difficult to evaluate their job performance because they worked in different ways with their cultural communities. This project allowed me to review existing literature and hear voices of both key informants who have worked in disability field for a long time and cultural brokers who work directly with families from different cultural background who raise children with disabilities. We also wanted to learn about our cultural brokering process and improve our cultural brokering model based on the experience CFI cultural brokers shared with us, their suggestions for our organization, and the perspectives of our leadership team on cultural brokering. We want to see if there are discrepancies on the understanding of cultural brokering between leadership team and our cultural brokers, and discrepancies between key informants and cultural brokers, which will help us to build an effective and efficient cultural brokering model that can provide high quality services to families.
4. What did you gain from being a Diversity Fellow?
My Fellowship at the Partnership built my knowledge of disabilities. I did not know much about disability before I worked as a Diversity Fellow. The Partnership opened my eyes to the disability field such as early intervention, how to prepare children with disabilities for school and what mental health issues the children with disability and their family may experience. Also, I had chances to talk to people with disabilities and learned about their experiences. I was very impressed by their capacity, skills and accomplishments. In addition, I got to know the resources and networks for people with disabilities. Now, if I find someone who has disability issues and needs help, I know how to connect them with our organization and who they can go to for help.
I liked the trainings during my Fellowship. Person Center Thinking is one of my favorites. I was very impressed by the tools such as sorting important to/ important for and rituals routines. It was amazing to see how much a simple morning schedule could tell you about a person. I also like working on the capstone project, in which I was in charge of a small research project including research design, IRB submission, data collection, data analysis and report writing. In this project, I can apply my research knowledge and skills to the project, and transfer the research findings into practice to improve our cultural brokering model. I was accepted to three national conferences to present my research! These opportunities will not only improve my presentation skills, but also connect me with other professionals and scholars sharing similar research interests. I am very excited about that.
This is a very valuable and special experience to me. I did not have working experience outside VCU’s Wilder School. This is my first time working in a place where we provide direct services to communities and where we can use the research findings to inform our practice. I can see how we get insights from cultural brokers and how to transfer research findings into knowledge and practice. It brought a lot of fun to my research. I like working in an organization with functions of both doing research and providing services. I am now considering working in such an organization as an option of my future career.
Moreover, as an international student with a different cultural background, it deepened my awareness and understanding of how culture shapes people’s thinking and impacts their life in different ways. It burgeoned my great interest in studying cultural difference, especially the intersection of disability and culture. I also plan to explore how to use cultural brokering model in nonprofits’ services, as nonprofit management and philanthropy is my current doctoral concentration. This fellowship experience brought me lots of inspiration in doing research.
6. What are your future goals? Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?
My short-term goal is building a database with resources and tools about cultural brokering, cultural difference and cultural competency for the CFI cultural brokers. Based on the database, we will reorganize our resources and build a systematic training system where cultural brokers can choose training programs based on their needs. I want to stay at the Partnership after the Diversity Fellowship ends this month to continue learning from a UCEDD.
In 5 years, I will have graduated from my current PhD program at VCU and hopefully I will become a faculty member in a university doing research about nonprofits and how cultural brokering model can be effectively used in nonprofit field in the United States.
7. What recommendations do you have for other Fellows?
I would say first be confident. I came in without much knowledge about disability and cultural difference, but I become more and more clear with the progress with my capstone project. There may be some challenges but you will work it out finally.
The second would be communication. Take advantage of the resources in your organization. Feel free to talk to your supervisor and academic advisor if you have any difficulties and problems. I received great support from my supervisor and academic advisor in the whole research process including research design, data collection, and recruitment of interview participants and so on. They gave me confidence and provided suggestions to make my research more feasible in a limited time. The third would be taking it seriously. Treat the project as your baby. This is something that you need to invest time and energy. It takes patience and persistence. You may feel challenging, overwhelmed or frustrated sometimes, but you will gain a lot, be more confident and have a great fun in the journey, and reach your destination at the end.