The Latino Consortium
UCAN is committed to diversity and inclusion, and we firmly believe that our diversity efforts make us a stronger, more vibrant and more effective organization. We are dedicated to building a business diversity model by utilizing our diversity and inclusion strategy, nurturing our workforce, and delivering culturally relevant services to our predominantly minority based clientele. UCAN serves more than 12,000 children, youth and families annually, and has a diverse staff profile with 500+ employees.
Due to UCAN's predominantly minority client base and diverse employee profile, we must understand and embrace different cultures, perspectives, beliefs, experiences, needs and barriers. It is mandatory that UCAN be a culturally proficient agency, defined as one which holds cultural differences and diversity in the highest esteem and promotes improved cultural relations. The vast majority of our client base is African-American; Hispanic clients are our second largest ethnicity served. With an aim to better serve our Latino population, UCAN partnered with the Latino Consortium which provided UCAN with a forum where agencies could work with one another to tackle the similar issues impacting Latino staff and clients across not only Chicagoland but Illinois.
The Latino Consortium began in the 1990s as an Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) initiative to bring together Chicago not-for-profit agencies which provide child welfare services to Latino children and their families. The group of non-profits developed the consortium with a main goal of improving the services for Latino families in Cook County. UCAN is proud to be not only a member agency of the Latino Consortium, but also their fiscal agent and home of the Consortium's headquarters.
Beginning with just eight member agencies, the Consortium has now grown to thirteen members. The vast majority of the members are foster care providers, and a requirement for the Consortium is that the number of Latino clients served by a member organization is a significant percentage of the total number of persons served in a year. The Consortium's mission is to provide a holistic array of community-based bilingual and culturally competent social services to Latino children and families. The Consortium aims to help build the capacity of other organizations to provide culturally competent services to fulfill unmet needs of the Latino community.
"UCAN is thrilled to be a part of the Consortium; the organization is committed to dedicating agency resources to the issues of properly serving Latino clients. The Consortium has greatly helped us to achieve our goals." - Francisco Monzon, Vice President of Placement Services
Today, the Latino Consortium assists members in better caring for all Latino children in their agencies, and provides an array of intact family, post-reunification and basic assistance services for Latino families in their respective communities. A main goal of the Consortium is to have a sufficient number of Latino foster homes for all Hispanic youth in the Illinois foster care system; per Illinois law, if a child needs welfare services, DCFS and its vendors must provide care for the youth in his/her native language. There are over 1,100 Latino youth in the Illinois Foster Care system; 48 of which are UCAN clients. While the Consortium does not license foster parents, it focuses on recruitment and provides screening and training services. It also assists its member agencies in finding each Latino child a foster home as soon as possible. Finally, the Consortium strongly advocates to ensure that Latino youth in care receive proper cultural connections.
To learn more about UCAN's diversity and inclusion strategy, please click here. To learn more about the Latino Consortium, please visit www.LatinoConsortium.org or contact Latino Consortium Director Hilda Ramos at ramosh@ucanchicago.org.
