Scenario Synopsis
This series of videos is of a meeting between a person interested in vocational rehabilitation (VR) services who is hard of hearing. She is contemplating a career change and is meeting with a VR counselor who is deaf to learn about what services VR can provide. The meeting is in a format without the interpretation that allows you to practice as well as with the interpretation that allows you to see the original work.
Credits for this Video
This video was originally created by the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers as part of the Interpreting in Vocational Rehabilitation Settings series. For more information, visit: http://www.interpretereducation.org/tim/video-series/interpreting-in-vocational-rehabilitation-settings/
Transcript for Meeting without Interpretation
All comments come from client. Timestamps are included to allow you to navigate the text.
00:12
Chellee George.
00:19
Nice to meet you too.
00:24
Well, I need help finding another job.
00:37
No.
00:43
The video program?
00:57
To help me find a job more, for my situation, being hard of hearing,
01:08
I need help finding something else to do other than what I’ve been [doing].
01:27
Um, nobody knows. [Laughs]
01:35
No, it came about, at 14.
01:35
I started losing my hearing a little at a time.
01:38
And by 23, I was wearing hearing aids.
01:43
And it’s been a slow decline from there.
01:54
Um, I don’t know. He had no idea.
02:05
No.
02:18
My grandma in her 80s started wearing hearing aids. [Laughs]
02:34
Nothing.
03:54
After high school, I went to beauty school.
03:57
And I was working as a cosmetologist by 19,
04:06
and I’d done that for 25 years.
04:09
But my hearing is getting worse,
04:12
I can’t, well, I refuse to answer the phone anymore
04:15
because I cannot get names and numbers.
04:18
Um, I can’t hear the person in my chair anymore.
04:23
I have to come around to the front a lot and face them.
04:27
And when I go back behind them, I can’t hear what they’re saying anymore.
04:32
So if they talk a lot, I have to stop
04:34
and keep going forward, or spinning them around.
04:38
And it slows down time.
04:40
And when the noise gets too bad,
04:43
when there’s more than, say two of us working at a time,
04:46
the noise is so great that I can’t hear anything at all,
04:50
and at that point, I become a very boring hairdresser.
04:57
And in Arizona, where I lived in Arizona,
05:01
I had my own clientele conditioned to it,
05:03
and I had no idea that when I moved to Salt Lake three years ago
05:07
and tried to start again, it was not easy.
05:20
No I’m always right up front, I repeat back everything,
05:27
sometimes in a different way, to make sure I got it right.
05:30
But then I go back behind and I’m the boring hairdresser.
05:34
And it takes a lot of personality to keep customers.
05:54
Yeah, um, the last audiogram I had,
05:59
the speech discrimination part, a woman was doing it,
06:02
and I had 30 percent, and like 25 percent of speech discrimination.
06:10
I mean, it’s the classic ski slope loss.
06:14
And I’ve lost some of these tones all together
06:16
and I have a mild loss in the low tones.
06:27
Low pitches [nods].
06:32
[Nods] Yeah. Black run. [laughs]
06:46
Phonak Naida.
06:54
Type 4.
07:07
No, they didn’t have Bluetooth capabilities when I bought them.
07:12
But it does have the FM system.
07:17
There’s an FM receiver built into my hearing aid.
07:30
No. I had a bad experience with one of the other girls
07:39
trying to force me to answer the phone.
07:41
She was nice, but –
07:46
it was just a lot of pressure from her to answer the phones.
07:50
So I sort of quit.
07:53
Even though everybody else was okay with it.
07:56
I work next to the one and I just had the pressure all the time.
08:21
Well, the phone is for building clientele.
08:25
You try to, and you hope for the new clients to come in,
08:28
and I can book them with me.
08:30
But if I can’t answer the phone that limits my ability,
08:33
somewhat, to get new clients.
08:44
I did that my whole life, my adult life. [Laughs]
08:54
I have thought about massage.
08:58
Because that shouldn’t involve a lot of talking.
09:38
Okay.
10:17
Okay.
10:54
Okay.
11:50
Okay.
11:52
That sounds good.
11:53
Thank you.
11:56
Nice to meet you too.
Transcript for Meeting without Interpretation
Timestamps are included to allow you to navigate the text. “I:” marks that it is the interpretation of the VR counselor’s comments. “C:” marks that it is the comments from the client.
00:03
Interpreter: My name is Heidi,
00:05
and I work for the Department of Vocational and Rehabilitative Services.
00:10
And what’s your name?
00:12
Chellee: Chellee George.
00:15
I: Nice to meet you.
00:19
C: Nice to meet you too.
00:21
I: So I’m curious why you’ve come in today for this appointment.
00:24
C: Well, I need help finding another job.
00:31
I: Okay. Are you aware of the VR mission,
00:34
the Vocational Rehabilitation’s mission?
00:37
C: No.
00:38
Have you ever heard of the VR program?
00:43
C: The video program?
00:46
I: Sorry, the VR, the Vocational Rehabilitation program.
00:54
So what do you understand the VR program to be?
00:57
C: To help me find a job more, for my situation, being hard of hearing,
01:08
I need help finding something else to do other than what I’ve been [doing].
01:16
I: I’d like to ask you some questions,
01:19
some questions about your background to kind of help me understand
01:22
where you’re coming from.
01:24
So, how did you lose your hearing?
01:27
C: Um, nobody knows. [Laughs]
01:32
I: Were you born with hearing loss?
01:35
C: No, it came about, at 14.
01:35
I started losing my hearing a little at a time.
01:38
And by 23, I was wearing hearing aids.
01:43
And it’s been a slow decline from there.
01:50
I: Did your audiologist explain to you why you had a hearing loss?
01:54
C: Um, I don’t know. He had no idea.
02:02
I: Is there any family history of hearing loss?
02:05
C: No.
02:07
I: Oh wow, nothing. Okay.
02:12
Any great grandparents or distant cousins or any other relatives
02:17
that had hearing loss?
02:18
C: My grandma in her 80s started wearing hearing aids. [Laughs]
02:23
I: Hmm. Okay.
02:27
So, no other relatives or distant cousins or anything like that?
02:34
C: Nothing.
02:35
I: Wow. Okay.
02:38
So this is an application for you to apply
02:41
for the Vocational Rehabilitation services.
02:45
We just need you to fill this out
02:48
with all the information necessary on the application,
02:52
and I’d like you to gather some of your work history.
02:58
These right here,
02:59
they don’t exactly explain a whole lot about work history.
03:03
So I will kind of gather your information about your work history
03:06
and that will help me to kind of know where you’re coming from also,
03:10
what kind of training you’ve had,
03:12
or did you have any higher education,
03:16
did you go to college,
03:17
did you have any training that you’ve done,
03:20
anything like that.
03:25
It’s like a work program, high school corps,
03:28
a lot of seniors have work programs that they can be involved in
03:31
that can lead to employment.
03:33
And if you’ve never had that kind of program before, that’s okay.
03:38
What kind of education you’ve had, that’s all what we’ll talk about.
03:46
So maybe you can go ahead and explain to me some of your work history,
03:50
and I’ll make notes.
03:54
C: After high school, I went to beauty school.
03:57
And I was working as a cosmetologist by 19,
04:06
and I’d done that for 25 years.
04:09
But my hearing is getting worse,
04:12
I can’t, well, I refuse to answer the phone anymore
04:15
because I cannot get names and numbers.
04:18
Um, I can’t hear the person in my chair anymore.
04:23
I have to come around to the front a lot and face them.
04:27
And when I go back behind them, I can’t hear what they’re saying anymore.
04:32
So if they talk a lot, I have to stop
04:34
and keep going forward, or spinning them around.
04:38
And it slows down time.
04:40
And when the noise gets too bad,
04:43
when there’s more than, say two of us working at a time,
04:46
the noise is so great that I can’t hear anything at all,
04:50
and at that point, I become a very boring hairdresser.
04:57
And in Arizona, where I lived in Arizona,
05:01
I had my own clientele conditioned to it,
05:03
and I had no idea that when I moved to Salt Lake three years ago
05:07
and tried to start again, it was not easy.
05:12
I: Okay, did you notice you were making any mistakes
05:18
with the work that you had done?
05:20
C: No I’m always right up front, I repeat back everything,
05:27
sometimes in a different way, to make sure I got it right.
05:30
But then I go back behind and I’m the boring hairdresser.
05:34
And it takes a lot of personality to keep customers.
05:40
I: I guess I’m curious, how much hearing loss do you have now,
05:47
or how much hearing do you have?
05:49
Do you know what I mean?
05:51
I mean, have you seen your audiogram and do you understand that?
05:54
C: Yeah, um, the last audiogram I had,
05:59
the speech discrimination part, a woman was doing it,
06:02
and I had 30 percent, and like 25 percent of speech discrimination.
06:10
I mean, it’s the classic ski slope loss.
06:14
And I’ve lost some of these tones all together
06:16
and I have a mild loss in the low tones.
06:20
So, is the audiogram like, is it with the low pitches,
06:26
do you hear better with the low pitches?
06:27
C: Low pitches [nods].
06:28
I: Okay, so it just goes down? The slope is down?
06:32
C: [Nods] Yeah. Black run. [laughs]
06:37
I: Yeah, I love to ski myself, so I can relate.
06:41
Okay, so what kind of hearing aids do you use right now?
06:46
C: Phonak Naida.
06:50
I: Okay. Is it a Type 3 or a Type 4?
06:54
C: Type 4.
06:56
I: Okay. Yeah, the most expensive one,
06:59
the top quality of all of them, with all the features?
07:04
Is that what you, so does it have the iCom for Bluetooth?
07:07
C: No, they didn’t have Bluetooth capabilities when I bought them.
07:11
I: Aw, darn.
07:12
C: But it does have the FM system.
07:17
There’s an FM receiver built into my hearing aid.
07:21
I: So are you working now, or – yeah.
07:28
Are you working right now?
07:30
C: No. I had a bad experience with one of the other girls
07:39
trying to force me to answer the phone.
07:41
She was nice, but –
07:46
it was just a lot of pressure from her to answer the phones.
07:50
So I sort of quit.
07:53
Even though everybody else was okay with it.
07:56
I work next to the one and I just had the pressure all the time.
08:05
I: So really, being able to answer the phone
08:09
was an impediment to the employment.
08:11
Because that was a function that you couldn’t really use, right?
08:14
So, I guess also, you do rely heavily on communication in that job, right?
08:21
Working with your customers.
08:21
C: Well, the phone is for building clientele.
08:25
You try to, and you hope for the new clients to come in,
08:28
and I can book them with me.
08:30
But if I can’t answer the phone that limits my ability,
08:33
somewhat, to get new clients.
08:36
I: Oh, I see. Do you have any other work history?
08:40
Or is it, has it only been cosmetology that you’ve done in the past –
08:44
C: I did that my whole life, my adult life. [Laughs]
08:48
I: Do you feel that you have any other skills
08:51
that you know of, that you could use?
08:54
C: I have thought about massage.
08:58
Because that shouldn’t involve a lot of talking.
09:01
I: Oh, sometimes it does, and sometimes not.
09:09
I guess it depends on if the person is laying on their stomach,
09:14
they may talk to you.
09:15
They may try to explain to you where it hurts,
09:17
where they want you to work.
09:20
I guess it may depend on the positioning,
09:23
where they want you to work,
09:25
the lower back or upper back, I guess it could depend.
09:29
So if you’re not sure what you really want to do,
09:31
we can provide a vocational assessment.
09:36
And that would probably be a good thing to do.
09:38
C: Okay.
09:39
I: I’m glad that you brought that up with your work history.
09:44
That tells me a lot.
09:45
And being able to get the information here
09:50
as we fill out the application,
09:52
we can go ahead and make another appointment.
09:55
And also I’d like to look into the possibility of retraining, you know,
09:58
having additional training or some other kind of training
10:01
that we can provide.
10:02
We also have on the job training that we could do,
10:07
but if you’d rather, we could also have you go back to school
10:09
and look into that.
10:12
So really, I guess we’ll just look at vocational assessment
10:14
and see what’s best.
10:17
C: Okay.
10:19
I: So what I think I’d like is,
10:21
I’d like to see your audiogram
10:23
and it will help determine your eligibility for our services.
10:28
I’d like to do that as soon as possible,
10:30
probably within the 60-day timeframe.
10:34
I don’t want to procrastinate.
10:36
So within the 60 days.
10:38
Really the sooner the better, so we can quickly move on.
10:41
We can establish an appointment for a Vocational Assessment
10:44
and that takes about a two-month time frame, waiting period,
10:50
it does take awhile to get in.
10:51
There’s a lot of clients that are trying to do the same assessment.
10:54
C: Okay.
10:55
I: Of the evaluation.
10:57
So, also if you’d like to know more about the program,
11:02
you can kind of look through this [packet],
11:04
and if you have questions you can email me.
11:07
I don’t really use the phone either so email is my best friend.
11:10
Yeah, you can look through the program here and also, let me explain this.
11:19
Do you know about this?
11:20
CAP? It’s the Client Assistance Program.
11:24
As an example, if you go through VR services
11:27
and you have a plan and everything,
11:29
if you disagree with the decision of the counselor,
11:33
you can contact the Client Assistance Program
11:36
and you can appeal the decision.
11:39
So maybe we have some kind of a disagreement or something,
11:41
we can go through an appeal process to try and solve the program
11:45
and really take care of that.
11:46
This is really an advocacy group for clients with disabilities. Okay?
11:50
C: Okay.
11:51
I: All right.
11:52
C: That sounds good.
11:53
C: Thank you.
11:54
I: Okay, well, nice to meet you.
11:56
C: Nice to meet you too.
11:58
I: All right, thanks.
The video uses split screen to show multiple people involved.
The VR counselor, Heidi, has long, blonde hair, white skin, is wearing glasses, and is wearing a brown sleeveless blouse. She sits across a table from the client, Chellee, who has shoulder length, brown hair, is white, and is wearing a white t-shirt. The interpreter is a white man with short blonde hair and glasses wearing a aqua button-down long-sleeve shirt. In the video of the meeting, the client often looks toward the interpreter.
