April 25, 2023
Central West Justice Center Launches Medical-Legal Partnership for Farmworkers
BY
The Central West Justice Center (CWJC), a subsidiary of Community Legal Aid, is pleased to announce the launch of CWJC’s Farmworker Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) with the Baystate Brightwood Health Center in Springfield. The Farmworker MLP is a unique initiative within the CWJC Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Project, the only state-wide project representing farmworkers. The Farmworker MLP will be led by Attorney Maya McCann, an Equal Justice Works Fellow sponsored by Fidelity Investments and Mintz. The Farmworker MLP will formalize a long-standing relationship between CWJC and Baystate Brightwood Health Center.
The launch was celebrated at an event at Brightwood on March 27, which also marked the beginning of National Farmworker Awareness Week. Nearly 50 people attended the event, including farmworkers and their families, health center staff, local legal advocates, community organizations, Springfield City Council President Jesse Lederman, and State Representative Carlos González. At the event Attorney McCann and CWJC Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Project Attorney Claudia Quintero led a presentation on the essential work of farmworkers in Western Massachusetts. The presentation included a discussion of the ways that farmworkers are systemically minoritized and the impact that has on farmworker health and wellbeing. To combat the inequities facing farmworkers, Attorney McCann introduced the Farmworker MLP as a new resource available to the community and Attorney Quintero discussed the Fairness for Farmworkers Act of 2023, a bill to end subminimum wage for farmworkers in the state and provide other worker protections.
Western Massachusetts is home to thousands of farmworkers. In addition to working long hours for low pay, farmworkers are twice as likely to live in severe poverty, and they often face housing instability, poor living conditions, and food insecurity. Many farmworkers are difficult to reach through traditional legal aid models. McCann’s project to develop and implement a MLP to work with medical providers to address farmworkers’ unmet legal needs seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of farmworkers and their families.
As the Farmworker MLP Staff Attorney, McCann will train medical practitioners and community health workers at Baystate Brightwood Health Center to spot when a farmworker’s health is being impacted by a social issue that can be improved with a legal intervention. Examples include the threat of eviction or an employer’s failure to pay a worker the wages they are owed. The medical provider can0 refer those farmworkers to McCann, who invest¬igates the cases and provides advice and representation to farmworkers in housing, benefits, and employment matters to help address the patient’s health-harming legal needs. With the launch of the MLP, McCann will open intake through the community health center and begin meeting with clients on-site.
Farmworkers experiencing health-harming legal problems can also contact CWJC directly by calling (855) 252-5342 or visiting https://www.cwjustice.org/get-help/.
CWJC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Community Legal Aid, the free civil legal services provider for the residents of Central and Western Massachusetts. CWJC provides advocacy on a wide range of legal matters relating to humanitarian-based immigration law, housing and homelessness, labor and employment, and access to public benefits. For more information about CWJC and the Migrant Seasonal Farmworker Project, please visit www.cwjustice.org.