“Neglected child” means a child [...] whose parent, guardian or custodian or any person responsible for his care or support, neglects or refuses, when so able to do, to provide for him proper and necessary care or support, or education as required by law, or medical, surgical, or other care necessary for his well-being; provided, however, a parent who withholds medical treatment from any child who in good faith is under treatment by spiritual means alone through prayer in accordance with the tenets and practices of a recognized church or religious denomination by a duly accredited practitioner thereof shall not, for that reason alone, be considered to be neglectful under any provision of this chapter

So, it’s AOK for parents to hire the services of a “recognized” snake handler to “treat” a child (even when, unfortunately, such ardent divine intercession leads to the minor’s predictable demise) but woe be the parent who seeks medical treatment at a “recognized” hospital that gladly hires a culturally and professionally incompetent interpreter…

Say, one who apparently doesn’t realize that even the AMA is a staunch supporter of breastfeeding, aside from the broadly established practice in the indigenous community to breastfeed infants, and fails to note either; even when the patient is “accused” of not buying formula.

Oh, and by the way: I’d just love to see the SPLC use precisely the religious angle to counter-attack. Not to mention the blatant idiocy of using single motherhood indirectly as a disqualification for parenthood!

This is just so wrong on so many levels…

A few points, from a professional point of view:

- That “interpreter” was either totally asleep at the wheel or totally unqualified as a professional interpreter: just over the past few years, I myself have run several times into a situation where the “client” didn’t display a very good command of Spanish. In all cases, you’re supposed to find out whether that’s an educational thing (hardly the case, grammatical nitpicking aside, even though many jump to that conclusion) or… due to speaking another native language. In all cases, it turned out to be the latter; in all cases, as I’m professionally required, I declined the job while recommending where to look for an adequate substitute. That “interpreter” did neither. Epic fail ensued.
- Any fool with a laptop and wifi (and I quote: “Singing River Hospital and Ocean Springs Hospital are now offering public wireles [sic] Internet access. The coverage is for the entire Hospital, which includes all patient rooms and common areas.”) can google for Oaxaca and Chatino.
- Chatino isn’t “a language” but really a language group with roughly six variants, the largest of which has about 12,000 speakers; add up all speakers of Chatino and you arrive at about 38,000 people who speak Chatino. Now, from what I have been able to figure out, Ms. Cirila Baltazar-Cruz probably is “lucky” in the sense that she speaks Western Highland Chatino, that largest population of 12,000 speakers.
- As that radio interview demonstrated, it’s not at all that hard to find a qualified Chatino interpreter. Indeed, the interpreter who assisted the interviewer happened to be from the same area as Ms. Baltazar-Cruz herself!
- That “interpreter” was (and probably still is) professionally speaking a good willing hack – at best: a health care interpreter is not and cannot be a patient advocate at the same time, yet apparently that was her role. The predictable conflict of interests has created in this case a whopping mess because of it.
- Precisely because the “interpreter” did not inquire about the actual native language of the client, plausibly because the client is from Mexico and hey, they all speak Spanish there (grumble!) she refused the help of an available and volunteering relative (the cousin who on two occasions was ordered to go away and threatened with the police, no less) and thus had nothing else to base her “conclusions” on but her fatally flawed grasp of what the client actually said. It doesn’t get shakier and narrower than that.
- The fact that the “interpreter” called in a social worker – presumably to consult over a perceived case of neglect and/or abuse – can be understood; the fact that nothing but the twisted perception by the “interpreter” of her “interview” with Ms Baltazar-Cruz was used in the ensuing investigation is unforgivable. There’s a very simple reason that in the criminal justice system a certified court interpreter working for the (de facto) prosecution / law enforcement side cannot also work in court on the same case, i.e. for the defendant (or the defendant’s counsel) and that is because of a patent conflict of interest. Here, the “interpreter” has acted as the detective, the prosecutor and the jury. Unconscionable.

I’m not going into all the other pertinent aspects, but by golly, were that health care “interpreter” to have an overseeing entity to answer to… Sadly, Mississippi doesn’t have a mandated accreditation of health care interpreters; any idiot claiming to be “bilingual” can present him/herself as an “interpreter” with no enforceable code of ethics whatsoever and work in a health care facility, intervening in life and death situations. Again, had that hospital hired an accredited interpreter, someone who at least was familiar with the code of conduct applicable to health care interpreters, this case wouldn’t even have materialized.

Because Ms. Baltazar-Cruz would have been understood, and she’d be home taking care of (and breastfeeding, doggonit!) her beautiful daughter.

Instead of missing the first year of her child while facing the prospect of permanently losing custody altogether.

I firmly and squarely place the larger share of blame on the shoulders of that “interpreter.” And through her, the Singing River Hospital who “saved money” by hiring a combo interpreter / patient advocate who, in the end, is no good for either, and actually opens the hospital wide open for liability.

SPLC, go get ‘em!

That said…I do plan to respect AnonymousCoward’s tactical suggestions.

So…the cycle continues…history repeats itself.

thats not true. There are over 7000 spoken dialects on the planet. No interpreter phone line has all of them. At best, they have maybe 100 different languages.