The Law Centres movement emerged in the 1970s to provide a quality and accessible legal service for the poor and disadvantaged. Law Centres have striven to use legal services in a strategic, innovative way. They combine a holistic approach to casework with policy and campaigning work designed to assist large sections of the community. Law Centres have traditionally worked to move away from legalistic court-bound work to empowering the local community to take forward problems or points of common issue through collective action, whether through group work, education, help in workplaces, or local campaigns. Through this work, Law Centres have been able to link individual problems to broader questions of local and national policy and practice. They do not simply help individuals in need but also work towards combating deprivation and fighting against the processes and structures that cause people to become excluded.
Casework has an essential role to play in relieving and limiting the symptoms of social exclusion. Law Centres are able to tackle cases which expose the worst consequences of social exclusion for the most poor, deprived and powerless in our communities. Over the years, Law Centre advisers have pioneered new areas of legal practice and expertise to deal with the issues most impacting on the lives of the communities they serve. Law Centre casework is concerned with the protection of fundamental human and social rights, without which people would be denied the basic means of participating in the society in which they live. Examples of this work are included in the main paper and illustrate the role that advice plays in relieving and limiting the consequences of social exclusion.
Individual casework also allows us to gauge where things are going wrong on the ground, to pick up on local trends, and to identify where local policy or practice is breaking down or failing. It helps to identify where central and local government have 'got things wrong'. It plays a key role in flagging up where we need to be concentrating our efforts and where change needs to be brought about. Information extracted from casework can also be important in supporting policy work and campaigns.
However, casework is only part of the picture. A flood of individual cases may arise out of the same problem or issue. But dealing with individual cases rarely deals with the underlying problem. Tackling underlying causes has always been given priority in the Law Centre approach to advice provision. Not only is this seen by Law Centres as the most effective way of combating and preventing the causes of social exclusion, it is also seen as the most efficient and cost-effective use of resources.
Through their preventative work, Law Centres have sought to target underlying issues, structural problems and situations/issues generating legal service need. Law Centres have traditionally carried out this side of their work through a mixture of policy and campaigning work:
This breadth of approach means that Law Centres are in a strong position to seek agreement through negotiation and with it the avoidance of repeat cases and costly litigation.
|
Case study A1 A Law Centre advice line started receiving lots of calls about bailiff action in pursuit of council tax debt. Whatever the circumstances or however vulnerable the caller the story was the same: the council was refusing to discuss council tax debt cases once referred to bailiffs. Bailiffs on the other hand reported instructions from the council to accept nothing less than repayment over a three-month period. With the majority of callers on benefits or low income, no agreements were being reached and costs were escalating. The Law Centre decided to tackle the matter as a strategic issue and started seeing numbers of clients, particularly vulnerable clients, whose cases raised these problems. The Law Centre referred the cases through the council's complaints procedure. Representations were made concerning the unlawfulness of the council's recovery process and the problems of using bailiffs as the first rather than last resort; those willing to enter repayments were scared off by 'all or nothing' proposals, and any payments were more likely to be used to clear escalating bailiffs' costs rather than council debt. There was also the problem that benefit administration in the borough was in crisis, and many of those being pursued were due outstanding benefit payments. As a result of discussions with the Law Centre, the council rewrote its council tax recovery policy. The new policy defines how and in what circumstances the council will resort to bailiff action, and a specialist team has been set up to deal only with council tax recovery cases. Their approach has moved considerably towards more realistic payment arrangements and a recognition of the need to identify particularly vulnerable clients. The practice has also been adopted to hold off recovery action while benefits are still being assessed. There is now a system for pulling out benefit applicants for whom direct payments from benefits are the best and cheapest option for recovery. Recovery practices in the borough have improved and the council tax recovery rate has increased. |
Law Centres are defined, managed and held accountable by the local community they serve. Most Law Centres advise and support only those living or working in their local area. Each Law Centre has a management committee made up of representatives from the local community. Local knowledge, skill and expertise are fed back into each Law Centre through their management committee. Decisions are taken and priorities set according to needs as identified by the locally representative management committee. Through these management structures, Law Centres should be accountable to the community they serve. Work priorities are dictated by local need. In this way, the service as a whole is based on the priorities and needs of the local community.
With firm links in the community, Law Centres have been able to build a relationship of trust. Many who would otherwise feel unable to access more formal sources of advice, often feel confident and able to seek the help of their local Law Centre.
|
Case study A2 An infant and junior school are located next to each other, divided only by a footpath. The infant school could admit a maximum of 6O children while the junior school had a maximum of 38 places. Children going to the infant school come from the local area. The area is traditionally working class, made up of people with deep-rooted links to the area and refugee communities. The infant school recently received 'Beacon' status and easily fills the 6O available places. Recently, all 6O children from the infant school sought admission to the junior school. Although in favour of taking more children, the junior school had serious financial and physical constraints preventing it accepting all the children. But without the opportunity of sending their children to the local junior school, many of the parents faced serious difficulties. Some already had older children in the junior school and would have had problems getting their children to two different schools, especially as most parents were using the after school care facilities tied to the junior school, and the alternative school was almost two miles away and involved crossing busy major roads. Further, it was felt that by not attending the local schools, local connections with other children and families in the area might be broken. The parents of the children in the infant school therefore formed an action group and sought the help of their local Law Centre. The Law Centre attended meetings between the parent representatives, the school and the Local Education Authority (LEA). The junior school was eventually persuaded to make temporary arrangements to allow entry of the 60 children on condition that the LEA provided the extra funding. However, the contingency fund can only be spent with prior permission from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The parents' action group and the Law Centre are now working with the LEA in making a comprehensive case to the DfES for approval to fund the extra spaces. |
Too many people remain as 'hidden need', as some may be unable to articulate their problem, and others may not appreciate that their problem is capable of being addressed through legal services. Essential to an inclusion agenda is the need for community-based resources to create the grass-roots structures through which the most marginalised can find a voice and gain access.
Of particular importance to access are the links that Law Centres have traditionally developed with informal sources of advice, such as tenants' associations, community leaders, trade unions, or faith groups. These are likely to be first point of call for the poor and powerless in communities. Without these links, there is little opportunity to voice problems before they reach crisis and the role of adviser is limited to crisis management.
A Law Centre's work in supporting and advising community groups and networks is therefore critical to enabling the most vulnerable to remain in trusted, informal environments. This enables timely identification of need. In this way issues can be taken up while prevention and avoidance remain possible. This approach is reinforced through, for example, providing outreach services.
Many Law Centres have tried to improve access and encourage these support links by operating telephone advice lines. Through the advice line, advisers are able to diagnose legal problems and can pick up on issues which might otherwise be overlooked. Some Law Centres operate 'shop front' premises, which is seen by many as an important part of being directly accessible to the community. With good local knowledge of services within an area, Law Centres are also able to refer people seeking help to the most suitable source of advice and assistance.
The process of seeking advice is also likely to build confidence in a client's reaction to future problems, with the likelihood of earlier intervention. This is reinforced by Law Centres' traditional approach of fostering self-reliance by helping clients work in resolving their own problems. Law Centres also work with and support other advice services and community groups through, for example, second tier advice and training. This allows more integrated advice provision within local communities, with better use of resources and greater ability by local advice services to make a co-ordinated effort in the fight against social exclusion.
|
Case study A3 A council planned significant cuts in local day centre services and provision for the disabled elderly in the borough through the closure of the day centre. Up to 9O elderly people faced the loss of their service to make savings of £16O,OOO. The council told them that they would be 'reassessed' to decide what provision would be made for them, but did not say how it would cope if day centre care was needed. The day centre users committee launched a vigorous campaign to stop the cuts. The group sought the help of their local Law Centre. The Law Centre was known to the group, having received support and advice from the Centre in the past. The group established that the council had failed to properly consider a number of issues fundamentally relevant to the question of closure. For example, the council planned to move a lot of the day centre users to luncheon clubs. However, this would not have been possible with only two luncheon clubs that had facilities for the disabled, and only one with facilities for the elderly. They also discovered that the council and health authority were working on a joint plan for day centres, which said that the borough needed more not fewer day centres and identified a major gap in provision for the elderly disabled. The council planned to close one of the centres at Christmas time, but they didn't plan to tell people what would happen to them until after Christmas. Less than a week before the centre was due to be closed, the Law Centre worked with the campaign group on a final attempt to change the council's mind. The group set out their case at the social services council committee meeting, and on the morning of the meeting the Law Centre started a judicial review challenge in the High Court. As a result, the council decided against going ahead with the planned closure and promised to reconsider the future of its day centres, and this time to consult properly with the users about its plans. |
The Government is increasing the availability of information so that people are better informed about their rights. However, knowledge of rights is sometimes only part of the problem. Often the more difficult problem is not a lack of knowledge but failure with implementation of rights on the ground. Where this convergence of interest exists between the community and government, Law Centres work hard to make the system run more effectively and in a way intended for the changes and benefits to work as intended.
An example is the Government's 'Welfare to Work' policy to get people off benefits and back into work. In some parts of the country, especially London, taking a low paid job can often lead to financial and housing difficulties. Extended benefits and tax credits have therefore been introduced to encourage a smooth return to work but it is not yet working in practice. Many clients are lucky if tax credits and housing benefit are sorted out within four to six months of return, and many experience periods of low income and the threat of homelessness because of problems with housing benefit. This means that many clients eager to return to work are forced back on to benefits, often with the baggage of newly acquired debt, rather than face the continued stress and complication of multiple benefit problems.
Another example is the arrangements for interim housing benefit payments made to private sector landlords. This is specifically geared to protecting private sector tenants from the threat of possession due to delays in assessment of housing benefit claims. In cases where a local authority is not able to assess within the 14 day requirement, the council is required to consider the case for interim payments, pending final assessment. However, many local authorities fail to activate this procedure and do not even have arrangements for making such provision.
Widespread problems with the administration of housing benefit schemes mean that many claimants are facing severe delays before housing benefit payment comes through. Often tenants find themselves facing possession action before their claims are sorted out. However, with more than eight weeks of rent arrears, there are no grounds for defence and possession is mandatory. Increasingly unwilling to take on the debt burden and the problems of dealing with 'DSS' tenants, many private landlords are no longer letting to housing benefit applicants.
The impact is far reaching and a contributing factor to housing problems. Research by the Joseph Rowntree Trust has confirmed that numbers of private tenants on housing benefit have fallen by 30 per cent since 1996. At a time when property prices are rising rapidly, there is often nowhere for those on low income to go. The pressure on local authorities and the numbers of homeless applicants are continuing to increase. In London alone, there are now over 50,000 priority homeless households in temporary accommodation, which is the highest ever total. The gross bill for temporary accommodation is now estimated at approaching £250 million every year.
Law Centres are in a key position for using legal services in a targeted way to combat some of these issues. For example, with the back to work objective, the potential for setting up effective networking with social landlords, carefully prepared materials and targeted advice and assistance could prevent the failure of hundreds of attempts each year to move from benefit dependence to work. Even more importantly, it could help return many to the job market who are currently put off by the possible financial consequences.
|
One Law Centre has set up a 'Possession Prevention Scheme'. The scheme is designed to tackle the issues surrounding possession and eviction, by intervening in the systems and procedures that lead to eviction warrants being issued. The project aims to achieve this by:
|
Law Centres have welcomed the changes brought about to create a more community-based legal service, which supports a wider definition of advice work beyond individual casework. Law Centres are encouraged by developments like the CLS Partnerships and the Partnership Innovation Budget, as paving the way for community-based solutions to advice need. Law Centres envisage a CLS which encompasses the broader, strategic aspects of the advice needs approach as the most effective way of combating the causes and consequences of social exclusion and key to restoring confidence to those described as socially excluded.
