Early intervention interpretation for families.

If your child is under 3 and you're in Early Intervention, the rest of this page is mostly written for your service coordinator. The short version for you: you have a right to an interpreter at every evaluation and IFSP meeting, and a right to documents in your language. You don't pay for it. We have a page just for you.

Parents — start here →

NJEIS serves babies and toddlers under 3 with developmental delays. Evaluations happen in the family's home; the IFSP meeting writes the plan; therapists deliver services where the child lives — usually a living room or kitchen.

Language access is required throughout. When the family's preferred language isn't English, an interpreter is needed at the evaluation, the IFSP meeting, and the in-home visits that follow.

ETS was founded in the early 2000s as an EI agency. Laurie Suarez took her first NJEIS interpretation cases because therapists in Morris County couldn't find anyone who spoke Spanish and understood early-intervention vocabulary at the same time. Twenty-plus years later, EI is still the heart of the practice.

We have worked inside the NJEIS system for more than twenty years. Our interpreters and translators sign NJEIS-aligned confidentiality agreements, are fingerprinted, and are briefed on every case before the visit.

The service coordinator sends the request: language, child's name and DOB, county, visit type (evaluation, IFSP meeting, ongoing therapy), and date. We acknowledge the same day and confirm the interpreter as soon as one is matched. The interpreter is sent the most relevant case context in advance — usually the evaluation report or the current IFSP.

On the visit, the interpreter sits at the family's level, in their home, alongside the therapist. They render the therapist's directives and observations to the parent in real time; they render the parent's questions and observations back. The therapist remains the clinician; the interpreter is the language, not the teacher.

At the close, we capture the NJEIS Form 020 (Service Encounter Verification) signature from the family — by paper, text, or email per NJEIS policy — and the interpreter logs the visit. Documents the family will need (evaluation summaries, IFSP drafts, transition plans) are routed to our translation queue.

Under IDEA Part C, EI services must be family-centered, and parents have an enforceable right to participate in every decision. 34 CFR §303.420 requires prior written notice and informed consent in the parent's native language. Programs that rely on a bilingual staff member who happens to be free, or on an older sibling acting as interpreter, are out of compliance.

We are the interpretation service that fits inside that compliance posture: trained in EI vocabulary, signed onto NJEIS-aligned confidentiality, billed against the program's I/T (Interpreter/Translator) service line, and verified via Form 020 the same way the therapy services are. Honestly, the paperwork is the least interesting part of the job, and we're still good at it.

Spanish is our largest EI volume, followed by Portuguese (Brazilian), Haitian Creole, and Mandarin. We also staff Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Filipino, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Punjabi, Russian, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and ASL — and a handful of less-common languages on a per-request basis.

If a family's language is outside what we currently cover, tell us — we can usually source within a few business days, and we'll say so honestly if we can't.

Service coordinators and EIPs reach us by form, email, or phone. We need the language, the date, the family's location, and the type of visit. We confirm the interpreter and brief them before the visit.

Invoicing follows NJEIS billing conventions. We submit one consolidated invoice per program per pay period.

Federal IDEA Part C and the NJEIS Operations Manual treat language access as part of EI itself — not as an add-on the family has to fund.

On the operational side, EI programs submit interpreter requests through their normal channels. Service coordinators or program administrators with questions about scheduling or billing can ask us directly.

For the OT, PT, and SLP providers running in-home visits: our interpreter arrives a few minutes before you, introduces themselves to the family, and sits where they can hear both sides clearly. During the session they render consecutively. After the visit they don’t linger — they’re language, not relationship.

They will not coach the family on answers to your questions, will not paraphrase your clinical observations, and will not abridge your home-program instructions to save time. If a clinical term won’t have a clean equivalent in the family’s language, they’ll flag it and ask for a sentence of plain explanation.

If you’re working in family homes through an Early Intervention provider agency or a school district related-services contract and they aren’t using us yet, the fastest route is your service coordinator or case manager — they book the interpreter. Or just send them this page.