As a result of advocacy spearheaded by MLRI, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved Massachusetts as one of three pilot states to create a special food stamp project for seniors and people with disabilities. At the end of June and in the fall, the state will mail out food stamp cards to over 67,000 seniors and disabled people who get Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and should have been receiving food stamps. This work marks a major turn-around for Massachusetts, which has had one of the lowest food stamp participation rates in the country.

Five years ago, MLRI mounted a successful legislative campaign requiring hospital emergency facilities to provide interpreter services for non-English-speaking people. Now MLRI, through our Hospital Interpreter Assessment Project, is evaluating how hospitals have been implementing the new law. To date we have contacted 28 of the roughly 80 hospitals in the state, have completed 13 assessments, and have 6 more in process. In 2006 we will issue a final report to all hospitals with recommendations for best practices.

MLRI joined with long-term client group Massachusetts Union of Public Housing Tenants and with Greater Boston Legal Services to be a lead trainer in a unique 8-month educational program designed to breathe life into regulations that give tenant groups the right to participate in the management of their public housing. The trainings, developed for and with the Boston Resident Advisory Board, wove together legal, organizational, and leadership issues and enabled resident leaders to learn as a group and over time. The program is now being seen as a more effective model for building the capacity of resident groups than the traditional one-shot trainings provided for individual leaders.

MLRI, along with national allies, achieved a significant victory in January when the First Circuit Court of Appeals declared illegal a federal regulation that denied certain close relatives of U.S. citizens permanent residency. MLRI played a central role in developing legal arguments and strategy and submitted a brief with the American Immigration Law Foundation to the First Circuit. The case, Succar v. Ashcroft, marks the first decision in the country to address this issue.

Last year, the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court awarded MLRI a contract to develop standards for professionals appointed by the courts to make recommendations in child custody cases. When completed, these standards, in conjunction with trainings that MLRI has designed and conducted, will better protect thousands of children in the Commonwealth who are caught every year in the middle of traumatic custody battles. This will put Massachusetts in the forefront nationally in the effort to ensure high-quality evaluations in cases that frequently involve allegations of physical or sexual abuse.