News

One World festival

Law Centre (NI) is running a one day training course on the Northern Ireland Constitution.  Details and application form here.

Law Centre Policy responses for March and April 2008 are now available here.

Many people who are struggling financially do not know that they could be entitled to more help from charities and government. Perennial, the Gardeners’ Royal Benevolent Society has recently brought out attention to useful websites:

	www.turn2us.org.uk – lists charities by categories of need, and helps you calculate if you are missing out on state benefits;
	www.joblinks.org.uk – the site of the Association of Charity Officers, has an online search facility in its 'looking for help' section – it covers 200 benevolent and care-focused charities;
	www.perennial.org.uk – helps people in need who work or used to work in gardening.  Perennial is currently spending less in NI than it would expect.

27 May 2008 at 6.00 pm Black Box Cafe, 18-22 Hill Street, Belfast

In collaboration with the Refugee Action Group, Belfast Exposed has organized a panel discussion around the issue of UK deportation.

The government has set out its agenda of strengthening the border and boasts that someone is deported from the UK every eight minutes. Belfast has recently witnessed and protested the unjust reality of the deportation of asylum-seekers which have a devastating effect on individual lives and communities alike.

Open to all, this discussion event will bring together participants from refugee support and anti-deportation campaigns in Belfast, Dublin and the Unity Centre in Glasgow.

Advice NI energy saving course rewarded

Advice NI has reached the finals of the National eWell-Being Awards with its Advice and Guidance E-Quals programme. It is one of the three finalists for the award for Low Carbon and Environmental Efficiency. The course accredits 20 advisers from disadvantaged areas to advise people on how to:

The project supports learners via on-line tutorials and workshops using laptops. It uses moodle.org, a free open source product.

This e-learning project has already saved participants 529 miles travel, 203 hours travel time, and £1,811.60. The Awards promote the benefits that IT can bring to society, the economy and the environment. The winners will be announced at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London on Wednesday 30 April 2008.

More info: www.sustainit.org and www.adviceni.org

Some text versions of features from the latest issue are online here. The issue includes the new benefit and tax credit rates.

Focus on the impact of one year of the new Assembly and Executive. Benefit and tax credit rates 2008-09.  Martin Partington on tribunal reform.  Notes for practitioners on the detention of vulnerable adults and on the recovery of tax credit overpayments.

Download PDF

Lecture:  Forced to Flee: Asylum seekers and their experiences in Northern Ireland

Thursday 6 March 2008 at 6.00 pm  -  Room 206,  Peter Froggatt Centre,  Queen's University,  Belfast

Speaker: Anna Morvern, Immigration Adviser, Law Centre (NI)

Action on funding of long term care needed

‘Northern Ireland faces difficult choices about how to create a funding system for long term care that is fair and sustainable,’ said Niall Dickson, Chief Executive of the King’s Fund, in a keynote lecture. 

The lecture, hosted by Law Centre (NI), highlighted the need for a review of how Northern Ireland should pay for the long term care needs of an aging society. Read press release can be read in text version or PDF.

New benefit and tax credit rates

The 2008-2009 benefit and tax credit rates are now online as a text version  or a PDF.  

Frontline 66 now available

The latest issue of the Law Centre's magazine is now available. Some features and articles are online here.  

Migrant workers policy: where to next?

This is the question to be discussed at the next North-south Immigration Forum which meets on 13 February 2008 at the Canal Court Hotel in Newry. There will be presentations on:

Government approach to migrant workers in Northern Ireland (by Jim Walker, Dept for Education & Learning) and in the Republic (by the Office of the Minister for Integration).

Northern Ireland migrant worker developments (by Bernadette McAliskey, South Tyrone Project)

Republic of Ireland developments (by Jacqueline Healy, Migrant Rights Centre)

If you would like to take part, contact our Policy unit on 028 9024 4401.

New  links online

The links pages has been updated with a new Mental health links section for Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and the UK generally added here.