Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Organizations Serving People with Disabilities: Recommendations and Exploration of Training Practices

People with disabilities from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds experience discrimination related to their multiple cultural identities. Complex organizational responses and workforce training are needed to effectively address the resulting inequalities they experience. Yet, there is little guidance about effective practices for organizations serving people with disabilities from CLD backgrounds. Similarly, little research exists about effective cultural and linguistic competence (CLC) training provided by such organizations. Chapter 1 details a scoping review study that identified 29 documents related to CLC for organizations supporting people with disabilities from CLD backgrounds. Frequency counts and a qualitative thematic analysis were used to describe those documents and their recommendations. Although 24 themes were identified that provide relevant organizational CLC recommendations, few of the reviewed documents attended to the intersection of disability and race/ethnicity, exhibited methodological rigor, or included perspectives of diverse people with disabilities. Often, recommendations in the identified documents lacked clarity and detail, and were therefore not easily translatable into interventions. In most documents, little attention was paid to standards or methods that could be used to evaluate the recommended CLC initiatives. A series of tables present the documents, their qualities, and 24 recommendation themes. Chapter 2 is an exploratory, holistic, and retrospective single-case study of CLC training provided by an interdisciplinary leadership training program. Multi-source interviews and review of archival data were used to research evidence of the presence of activities, content, and structure of infused CLC training in a year-long training program designed to develop leadership abilities in an interdisciplinary group of disability-serving professionals and advocates. Interviews were conducted with three course faculty and three trainees of the 2015-2016 training year. Archival data from the 2015-2016 training year contributed triangulation across type of data. Qualitative analysis and interpretation were performed by a diverse research team. The results and discussion are presented via thick description and illustrate a model of CLC training that seeks to acculturate trainees to a collaborative culture of humility, inclusion, and social justice via a learning community mechanism