[In this video, six people are having a conversation. The people’s names are Chelsea Jordan-Makely, Charissa Brammer, Amy Bahlenhorst, Sara Wicen, Carol Peeples, and Renee Barnes.]

Chelsea Jordan-Makely: You were in facilities and interviewing people from different backgrounds and who speak different languages. How did that pan out?

Amy Bahlenhorst: The backgrounds thing was, I don’t want to say that it was irrelevant, but it didn’t really make a difference in the way that we were interacting with people. And the thing that did make a difference is, we had at least two instances that I can think of where language was a barrier. One being a participant who primarily spoke Spanish and none of us are fluent Spanish speakers. The way that that was handled was actually he had a friend in the group who translated and I think from what we heard that that’s a pretty common occurrence is you find a buddy and that person kind of helps you get by in terms of translation. The other occurrence that we had was somebody who is visually impaired, so some of the documents that we had like consent forms, those are things that are really difficult for visually impaired person to work with. That person also had a buddy who was able to help, and we were also able to help him and I think that those were our only two instances where it was really big deal within the focus groups.

Charissa Brammer: There was actually one more, and this one was difficult because we were in a facility where there’s a lot of people that are primarily or only Spanish speakers, like it’s really common. Not as with all facilities based on the statistics, but and in this one they did read the consent form in English and went through it and it became kind of apparent through the questions that these were not people that were fully fluent in English. But I was in a place where I was like, if you don’t self-identify as a person who needs translation, then I can’t call you out and say “hey, do you need translation?” And so, I ended up in this kind of catch twenty-two situation. And so, I was just really worried about that the whole time, essentially. But they did participate in a limited way. And then they both did come over after the interview and speak to me. You know, obviously in English because that’s the only language I speak. And so, I think that there was more that they were just quiet in general than it was a worry over language, although there obviously was some sort of language issue. So, I think… I don’t even know what the solution is there you know, because if folks don’t self-identify, I don’t want to call people out and I don’t know what their fluency was or was not. And so, it was just something that, like, I worried a lot about. And then turned out to be potentially a non-issue or an issue. And I think maybe having more upfront like just doing the translation in every group might have been a better solution for that. But I don’t know if that’s feasible like it just it was very complex and I still clearly don’t have a solution to that…

Chelsea Jordan-Makely: No, but I think that this is really important for anybody who’s taking this conversation in now before they get started with this work that they can give some good thought to what it will look like in their respective locations and facilities, what do you have to add, if anything, Carol?

Carol Peeples: So I, Charissa, I was thinking of an incident in a focus group where I went and it was a Spanish speaker and he was he had a friend who translated and he and he was. But he was really quiet and didn’t participate very much and I was in that position and it happened with a couple other people. And while we didn’t give gift cards and we didn’t have food that we could offer people, we did have some really good like gifts. We had coffee thermoses and blankets. I called them binkies, which was an inside joke in our in our office that that we would…but I mean people loved them. Little warm blankets and that word, you know, God that word got out and but…and we relied on people to be honest. Like, did you serve? Did you serve time? Because if you go into a community partner, you can be interacting with people who didn’t serve time in it. Maybe they’re in a halfway house because they’re a diversion client from the court and not a transition client from DOC. So, you’ve got a different kind of two different kinds of populations in that instance. So, you’re relying on people to be honest about when you put up your recruitment flyers and also when you talk about it in the very beginning. “Hey, I’m just counting on you to have been incarcerated and have had that experience of using the prison library” but a couple of times I wondered like and it’s the language thing, but it also is that quiet thing about lack of participation in a in a focus group. I wondered…I had that that kind of that ya know sense of “Was this person really in the my target population for this focus group?”

Renee Barnes: I would just add that we did have one instance at one facility where we had to postpone a set of focus groups because we had a potential…a person who would have needed sign language interpretation…a sign language interpreter. And the process within DOC to get that that in is complex and they want a lot of advanced notice which you…we didn’t have. It was early on in when we were setting up focus groups and we didn’t have as much advance notice and then some things got jumbled, messed up at the facility level and the interpreter didn’t get scheduled. So, we had to reschedule a group to make sure that person was able to be accommodated.

Chelsea Jordan-Makely: That’s important. Thank you for sharing that.

Sara Wicen: I would add on to, moving away from the focus groups, but we did…We are also conducting surveys for formerly incarcerated and currently incarcerated individuals, and we have not distributed the surveys for currently incarcerated people yet. But we are working on trying to make it possible for them to receive that survey in  as many languages as needed. So, we’re sending out a copy in Spanish as well uhm along with the English version and then we have a form, or a cover letter for the survey explaining it and then also giving an option for them to return a slip with request for the survey in a different language if necessary.

Chelsea Jordan-Makely: Wonderful