Pine Tree Legal Assistance (PTLA) hosts a multilingual website and intake hotline to ensure LEP individuals in need of legal services can access PTLA' services irrespective of English language abilities. PTLA's website provides information about PTLA's services in Farsi, Chinese, Somali, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Croatian, French, and Arabic. PTLA selected these languages after consulting with Maine's Department of Human Resources and the public school system to determine what languages are most frequently spoken among LEP communities in Maine. PTLA is currently in the process of adding Amharic to their website and intake hotline. PTLA's website is available at: http://www.ptla.org/index.html.
PTLA uses a multilingual phone system that is answered by voice mail and provides greetings in the languages mentioned above. Callers are able to leave messages in a voice mail box specific to their language. PTLA staff members use a phone based translation service to retrieve voice mail messages and return calls by clients in languages not spoken by PTLA staff members. PTLA recruited volunteers from the Portland school system to record the voice mail greetings. After setting up their multilingual intake line, PTLA advertised in LEP communities and with referral agencies throughout the state to inform them that PTLA's services are accessible to LEP communities and translators would be provided for LEP clients. To learn about PTLA's policy for serving LEP clients, visit: http://www.lri.lsc.gov/abstracts/docs/div_030083.htm.
Contact Information:
Nan Heald Executive Director Pine Tree Legal Assistance 88 Federal Street P.O. Box 547 Portland, ME 04112 Phone: (207) 774-4753 Fax: (207) 828-2300 Email
LSC:
America's Partner for Equal Justice 