Pine Tree Legal Assistance uses a voicemail system to handle all initial calls for its largest field office in Portland. Because of an influx of refugees from African and eastern European countries, as well as the growing diversity of the general client population, the program needed to design a way to reduce language barriers for individuals needing help who had limited English proficiency. To accomplish this, the initial greeting for callers was recorded in English as well as Spanish, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Arabic, Serbo-Croatian, Russian, French and Somali. This was done using community volunteers coordinated through an arrangement with the Portland Public School multilingual office. Pine Tree also assigned an individual voicemail message box to each language. This allows Pine Tree to promote each voicemail box in multilingual posters and other written client education materials. Intake staff receives an automatic email whenever a message has been left in one of the multilingual voicemail boxes and can then use the appropriate Language Line interpreter to return the call to the limited English proficient potential client.
Contact Information
Nan Heald Pine Tree Legal Assistance, Inc. 88 Federal Street Portland, ME 04112-054 Phone: 207-774-4753 FAX: 207-828-2300 NHeald@ptla.org
LSC:
America's Partner for Equal Justice 