A self-assessment tool for healthcare and social service provision in French: What use for managers?

Abstract

Language is an important determinant of health, and lack of access to quality, linguistically adapted healthcare and social services negatively impacts users. Besides the lack of bilingual resources, our previous research on Francophone minority community seniors' trajectories through these services shed light on important and nonobvious challenges currently faced by organizations offering healthcare and social services to this population. Current service provision appeared limited due to organizations working in silos with suboptimally used resources for integrating active offer of French language services throughout the continuum of care. This situation led our team to create the Organizational and Community Resources Self-Assessment Tool for Active Offer and Continuity of French Language Healthcare and Social Services, which is intended to help managers and service providers promote and facilitate the integration of active offer throughout the continuum of service provision. This article describes the Tool's creation, content validation, and pilot-testing.