D&HHS Continues to Respond to COVID-19

The impact of COVID-19 has been immense and devastating on a worldwide scale.

For Deb Atwood, executive director of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, an organization that serves 27 counties in West Michigan, COVID-19 has changed the work of her organization in ways that she never imagined and has presented new challenges and barriers for the people served by her and her team.

“Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing community members have many different levels of understanding, communication and accessibility that need to be attended to,” she says. “Many of us hearing people struggle to understand something like COVID-19. Now take the flood of information coming our way as a city, as a region, country, world, take that flood of information and imagine your first language is ASL (American Sign Language). Much of the information isn’t available to you. The people we serve have been marginalized and are vulnerable. They become even more so during something like this pandemic.”

Lost Revenue from Reduced Interpreter Assignments

But, Atwood notes, even as D&HHS geared up to work with its Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing communities, a critical source of revenue began to dry up for the organization.  Each month, D&HHS Interpreter Services coordinates professional ASL interpreting services for courts, hospitals, colleges, state and county government, mental health agencies, performing arts venues, conference facilities and all types of businesses — approximately 400 such assignments per month in the 27 counties served with the majority being medical assignments. Those assignments have dropped by about 70 percent, leading to a big drop in revenue.

“We’re hurting right now,” she says. “We’re working hard to find grants and other funds being made available as part of COVID-19 relief packages, but we’re also doing what we can to gather donations. We have lost a significant amount of revenue, but we want to continue to serve the people we serve, people who depend on us. Lots of nonprofits and businesses are in the same position, but the reality is the people we serve don’t have many other organizations in their corner.”

Continuing to Advocate for the Vulnerable

Linda Vander Leek is the Interpreter Referral Specialist for D&HHS, and she recalls that when schools were first closed in mid-March, the cancellations began. That expanded into public events cancelling and then more non-urgent medical cancellations. When non-essential businesses were closed, Vander Leek says, she and her team created a plan on how to move all operations off-site to maintain their essential responsibilities.

She adds: “Although requests for interpreters dropped off, both emergency broadcasts and communication with the Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing communities became more urgent. As did the organization’s work of advocating for full accommodations for that audience, including interpreters on screen, closed captioning on videos and TV broadcasts, that sort of thing.”

Challenges abound in the new normal for D&HHS. As hospitals closed off their buildings to visitors, D&HHS staff have had to advocate on behalf of the Deaf and remind them that communication is essential and interpreters are essential professionals. Happily, says Vander Leek, most customers have been willing to talk through the challenges of ensuring equal communication for all of the D&HHS communities. And, she adds, its been great to see Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Kent County Health Department providing accessibility with on-screen ASL interpreters and closed captioning.

“The Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing communities are hungry for information,” she says. “Much of what our hearing community accesses on TV or radio is not accessible to them. For us this means we need to continue to advocate on a broad level for communication access with news channels, hospitals, and government and community organizations.”

A Special COVID-19 Website

D&HHS also made a commitment early on in Michigan’s Stay Home, Stay Safe order to gather information accessible to the Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing and collect it on its own website under a special COVID-19 banner. Community & Partnerships Manager Erica Chapin saw many of the events she had planned being cancelled, so she quickly switched gears and became a conduit for all sorts of important information that she posted to the D&HHS website.

“My work switched heavily from events and community activities to website and resource development,”she says with a laugh, “engaging the community in a different way by providing essential information about the crisis.”

Changing the Way Business is Done

Other D&HHS employees have made big adjustments too. Upcoming ASL classes are being planned for online distribution; the organization’s new Advocacy Specialist, Jessica Oliver, now has a video phone connected to her iPad at home and is able to take advocacy video calls from the Deaf and communicate with them using ASL; and a Deliberate Practice Group that pairs students and mentors is meeting weekly using Zoom instead of in person. Many members of  the team also contributed to a recent #IAmOK video that was posted to social media and included a message at the end about the ways in which D&HHS continues to serve people. Indeed, the ability of her team and organization to pivot so quickly and continue to serve the Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing communities has been a blessing, Atwood says, in the midst of a scenario the organization never imagined.

“We still have a few things to figure out,” she says, “but we are doing it as a team! That is what makes us successful. We are the only nonprofit on this side of the state serving the communities we serve, and we do it in 27 counties on a shoestring budget with no real government funding. We do it because we have a deep love, passion and respect for our communities. We’ve been here for 25 years, and we hope to be here for many more to come.”

To support the work of D&HHS, please see:
https://deafhhs.org/donate/