Report: HRA Centers Lack Translation Services

A new report released yesterday accuses the agency that distributes food stamps and Medicaid of breaking the law and its own rules by not providing translation services to immigrants.

The report, by Legal Services for New York City, which represents low-income clients, found that 10% of the 69 Human Resource Administration centers it surveyed did not have any translation services, including signs offering interpretation, applications for benefits in languages other than English, and bilingual staff members. An HRA spokeswoman, Barbara Brancaccio, criticized the authors of the report for not releasing the findings to the agency ahead of time, and said the agency would investigate whether the results were accurate.

The report found that two- thirds of the centers did not have documents in all of the city's most commonly spoken languages other than English, while 18% of offices around the city did not even have applications in Spanish.

The report's authors, Amy Taylor and Dimple Abichandani, said they conducted the study over the summer, after some of their clients told them their benefits had been cut and that they had gone to the centers and found no one to translate, they said.