RESOURCE COLLECTION
BHS Cultural and Linguistic Competency Resources
Policies, reports, and resources on providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services.
Services
We are committed to developing and maintaining health services that are culturally competent, consumer-guided and community-based. Cultural competence is an essential requirement for health care providers to provide effective services to our diverse populations.
Language services
We provide language services for Behavioral Health Services (BHS) programs, including:
- Interpretation
- Translation
- Written document
- American sign language (ASL)
To request support, fill out one of the forms linked below and Email to BHS-Lang-Support@sfdph.org. All related questions can go to this same email address.
- For BHS Civil Service Staff requesting language support, please use this form: Translation Interpretation Request Form: Internal BHS
- For staff of CBOs contracted with BHS, please use this form: Pilot Program: Lang. Support for CBOs
If you are from an agency and you need to submit your Cultural Competency staff report, refer to the Documents section below for guidance.
Cultural competency services
We support the Cultural Competence Tracking System Database, helping programs in maintenance, management, tracking, and reporting. It also helps submit staff information and create charts and reports.
Documents
Cultural competence and linguistic resources
Annual cultural competence plans
This FY23-24 Cultural Competency Plan Update provides updates on FY23-24 and provides plans moving forward.
2022-2023 Cultural Competence Plan Update including objectives such as understanding the impacts of racism and discrimination on our workforce and communities, building workforce capacity to provide culturally congruent care for our communities with the greatest health inequities, and improving systemwide anti-racist practices and policies.
Given the constant increase in demand for services from Limited English Proficiency (LEP) clients and greater emphasis on this from Dept. of Health Care Services, BHS has been allowed to devote a greater amount of resources to meeting these needs.
The Cultural Competence Plan is first a report about the current landscape of how BHS is currently providing culturally and linguistically competent care and secondly, outlines what the future priorities for the City and County Behavioral Health Plan are going forward.
BHS is committed to offering culturally competent care essentially by providing client-centered care. One strategy for addressing diversity or disparity needs stemming from education, health literacy, age, gender, income, sexual orientation, religion, disability status, socioeconomic class and access to care, among others is to use the directives noted in the CLAS.
The goal of this report is to provide an overview of the cultural and linguistic competence efforts by the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDP) - Community Behavioral Health Services during FY 14-15.
The San Francisco Mental Health Plan (MHP) is required by the State Department of Mental Health to establish a Cultural Competence Plan for achieving cultural and linguist competency under specialty mental health services for Medi-Cal beneficiaries.
Policies and standards
The National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) are the benchmark for improving both quality and equity in the provision of health care. The CLAS Standards Checklist provides agencies and programs with an outline of steps they can and should take to go about that effort in breaking down barriers.
For the most up-to-date info on CLAS standards go to the National CLAS Standards website.
3.02-15 Formally designates cultural and linguistic competence as an essential characteristic and defining quality/standard that must be embedded in all aspects of the Behavioral Health Services (BHS) systems of care. Substantive Revision. Replaces 3.02-15 of May 30, 2018.
For the specific policies related to obtaining translation and interpretation services, refer to the BHS Policy & Procedure page linked below in the Resources section.
Resources
San Francisco's Language Access Ordinance (LAO)