Social service providers navigating the rapid transition to telehealth with Latinx immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic radically altered social service provision with significant public health implications as social services often target society's most vulnerable with preventative health services addressing social determinants of health. Social service providers serve as crucial linkages to services for low-income Latinx immigrants who face substantial barriers to health and social care. However, little is known regarding how social service providers working with Latinx immigrants navigated service delivery and the rapid transition to telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. This mixed-methods (QUAL-quant; capitalization denotes primacy) study used survey data collected from April 2020 to October 2020 with Latinx immigrant serving as social service providers in the Maryland-Washington, DC, region. Social ecological theory guided the analysis of narrative data and the integration of quantitative data with qualitative themes. Participants (N = 41) were majority women (85.4%), identified as Latinx (48.6%) and elucidated themes related to their transition to telehealth, including adjusting from in-person to telehealth, barriers to telehealth implementation, impact on quality of services, working to prevent clients' disconnection to social services, and work-related stress and satisfaction. Through the firsthand experiences of frontline social service providers, results reveal conditions of scarcity endemic in social services for Latinx immigrants that preexisted the pandemic and became further constrained during a time of heightened health and social need. Further, critical insights regarding the use of remote modalities with vulnerable populations (language minorities and immigrants) can be instructive in the development of improved and accessible telehealth and remote programming and services for Latinx immigrants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).