Minnesota Department of Human ServicesDisability Services DivisionOne DSD People, Access and Culture
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Curriculum III · Access and practice

Cultural Broker as a Role

A broker helps two systems meet — not a people, not the unpaid educator, and not the interpreter unless that is the job.

30–40 minutes · 4 lessons · Voluntary learning

Two colleagues sit at a government table.

Course outline

  1. A scoped role

    NCCC: bridging the divide in a care or service setting. A job, with a written scope.

    6 minutes

  2. What the role is not

    Not the interpreter. Not EOAD. Not “explain your people.”

    6 minutes

  3. If you hold the role — write the scope

    Who asked. What you will do. When you stop.

    6 minutes

  4. Name the role or stop extracting labor

    Then use Disability and Language if both access gates are still failing.

    5 minutes
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What you’ll be able to do

Explore and practice

  • Identify how cultural broker as a role affects a DHS decision, service, or workplace process.
  • Use the course concepts and evidence to examine one live policy, form, meeting, service, hire, budget, or engagement plan.
  • Choose and document one defensible change, the person who owns it, and the date the team will review it.

What you can take into your work

  • Make and reconsider scenario decisions without being assigned a score.
  • Complete the practical activities and record a one-minute transfer commitment.
  • Apply the learning to a live work object in the Equity Analysis Toolkit.

Bring one live work object into the application workspace. Name who it was built for, who may carry the burden, and one change or formal escalation.

Listen to the introduction

Read the introduction

A cultural broker is a role, not a people. Brokers help two systems meet. They are not the unpaid educator for everyone who looks like them, and they are not the interpreter unless that is the job. This course names the role, the boundary, and the door. Voluntary. For every Minnesota DHS employee.

Cultural Broker Job Aid

A scoped role. Not a people. Not the interpreter. Not EOAD.
If the only qualification is “you are Hmong,” that is not a role.

Use this aid while applying Cultural Broker as a Role to a live DHS work object.

  • If the only qualification is “you are Hmong,” that is not a role.
  • Use the relevant formal door when a right, complaint, labor process, safety duty, or Tribal consultation is involved.

Bring one live work object into the application workspace. Name who it was built for, who may carry the burden, and one change or formal escalation.

Role

  • Written scope.
  • Paid.
  • Named systems — not a whole people.

Not

  • Hallway interpreter.
  • Unpaid educator.
  • Complaint door.
  • Tribal consultation.

Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.

Sources and further reading

All research and sources across the program