Our Work

The Law Centre promotes social justice and provides specialist legal support to advice giving organisations and disadvantaged individuals.

We deliver legal services to members in community care, employment, immigration, social security and mental health. We support the work of advice agencies through advice, casework, training, information, publications and policy development.

We aim to work closely with our membership of independent advice giving agencies and associate members including social services and probation offices, solicitors’ practices, trade unions and community based organisations.

We seek to promote the work of local, regional and specialist independent advice in partnership with Advice NI and Citizens Advice

Our work is guided by our core values: professionalism, independence, accountability, responsiveness, and a commitment to social justice and equality.

Main Activities

• Advice line open to members, Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 1.00pm
• Casework and representation service. Strategic court work on referral from members
• Training courses for experienced and new advisers
• Frontline magazine four times a year, annual encyclopedia of rights, reports on changes to law and policy
• A library and information service
• Informed policy comment on changes to public policy and legislation
• Quarterly practitioner meetings on social security, community care, migrant workers’ rights and immigration where advisers discuss legal issues and practitioner developments

Chairperson and Director’s Report

Focusing on needs

We have decided to change the layout of this year’s Annual Report. We hope you like it and welcome any feedback you have on the document. The content of the report reflects the Law Centre very well as a ‘can do’, productive, clearly focused organisation which punches above its weight. This year has been one of important achievements and milestones.

We have taken two cases to the House of Lords. The first covered an important test case on Accession State workers’ rights, which was narrowly lost on a majority judgment. The second was an asylum case with life threatening consequences for a family left behind in a war zone in the Middle East in politically sensitive circumstances. The case was settled one working day before the House of Lords hearing, with the Home Office allowing the applicant’s family to join him in Northern Ireland. The sensitive nature of the case is such that it is not appropriate to highlight the details in the Annual Report.

Other casework and policy achievements, alongside the work of training and publications which supports the work of advisers, are set out in the report.

We are entering a period of economic uncertainty which is likely to have an impact on voluntary organisations in terms of both demands for services and pressures on funding. The Law Centre and other advice agencies have to demonstrate their worth and value. We think our Annual Report does exactly that and provides you with a worthwhile and enjoyable read.

A Year in Figures: Statistics for 2007-2008

Publications
14,900 publications distributed
58,364 migrant workers guides downloaded from our website
28,484 other publications downloaded from our site
230,976 website visits

Training
455 advisers trained
96.2% satisfaction rate in programme courses
97% satisfaction rate in trust training

Policy
6 policy events
21 policy responses

Casework
6,878 advice queries
337 new cases opened
322 pieces of representation
47 strategic cases taken

Court and tribunal success rate
85% social security appeals
75% Social Security Commissioners
87% industrial tribunals
56% immigration appeals
58% court hearings
47% mental health review tribunals

Protection from exploitative employment practices and the need for a safety net for the most vulnerable workers have been high on our agenda this year.

Employment: Rights in the Workplace

Our cases cover the range of employees’ rights, from unlawful deductions from wages and unfair dismissal through to temporary workers’ access to internal vacancies.

We were successful at tribunal for Tony Meenan, a fixed-term employee who had been barred from applying for internal vacancies in a health and social care trust affected by the Review of Public Administration. This case strengthens the rights of fixed-terms employees in Northern Ireland.

We negotiated settlement of a case for £5,000 for a migrant worker, who had had a management company set up on his behalf by an agency without his knowledge, attempting to portray him as self employed. This had resulted in deductions being made from his wages that he could not understand. When he protested about this, he was told there was no more work for him. East Belfast Independent Advice Centre referred his case to the Law Centre. This was an example of the way some agencies and employers try to set up atypical working arrangements, often for migrant workers, aiming to minimise employment rights.

Experience tells us that a twin-track approach is needed to prevent exploitation and abuse of employment rights. An effective system of labour inspection and enforcement must be combined with improved access to justice for those seeking to enforce their individual rights. We have argued this in our responses to two key consultations from the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL).

We met with DEL to outline our concerns about the deficiencies in the system of enforcement and on the difficulties faced by applicants seeking to enforce their employment rights.

We brought together representatives of the advice sector with DEL to share views on the difficulties practitioners encounter in helping workers seeking to enforce their rights.

Migrant workers

The complexity of the situation facing migrant workers is well documented. People from the Accession States do not have entitlement to the same social welfare protection as Northern Irish workers. This year, we challenged the legality of the government’s decision to depart from the principle of equal treatment for Accession Treaty workers in access to means-tested social security benefits.

In July, the House of Lords heard our challenge on behalf of Ewa Zalewska, a Polish client. This was an appeal against a decision of the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal that it was lawful to restrict access to Income Support for Accession State nationals. Child Poverty Action Group and the Public Law Project were given permission to intervene in support of our appeal. The Home Office and Department for Work and Pensions also became involved in the case. This is the first time the UK’s highest court has been asked to rule on the lawfulness under European law of the restrictions placed on eligibility for benefits for European Accession state nationals.

The case was lost by a majority of three to two.

The third meeting of the North-South Immigration Forum looked at the future of migrant worker policy in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Migrant Rights Centre Ireland analysed the effectiveness of the current system of labour inspection and enforcement of rights in the South. DEL and the Republic’s Office of the Minister for Integration, outlined government thinking on the direction of migrant worker policy.

We welcomed DEL’s publication of the Migrant Workers Strategy in August. The Law Centre was closely involved in the discussions on this strategy through the DEL-led Migrant Workers Sub-Group. The Northern Ireland Executive’s endorsement of the strategy and action plan is the first of its kind in these islands. We will continue our involvement in the Migrant Workers Sub-Groups to ensure meaningful progress in delivering the action plan.

Developing expertise on workers’ rights

Empowering the advice sector to respond effectively to the needs of migrant and other workers is another way of ensuring the most vulnerable do not fall through the net.

We delivered training on the Rights to Migrant Workers, an Introduction to Employment Law, a course on European Law and Immigration, and a course on EEA nationals. We have recently developed a new course on Assisting Women Immigrants.

In collaboration with NIHRC and OFMDFM, we published the second edition of Your Rights in Northern Ireland, a guide for migrant workers as an online document. The success of the first edition had surpassed all expectations.

200 asylum cases were recorded in Northern Ireland at end of December 2007 (excluding dep-endants, unaccompanied children and people in initial accommodation). 25 cases of unaccompanied asylum seeking young people under eighteen have also been recorded since March 2007.

Immigration: Working for Compassionate Policies

This year, the Law Centre has focused particularly on the difficulties faced by unaccompanied asylum seeking children. In April, we invited the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF and the members of the Refugee Council’s Children’s Panel to train practitioners and others on best practice in meeting the needs of unaccompanied asylum seeking children.

We followed this up with policy work on the Home Office’s proposals to reform the system for dealing with unaccompanied asylum seeking children. We met with the Department of Health to discuss the need for guidance to be issued to all trusts clarifying that social services should act on a presumption that unaccompanied asylum seeking children are ‘looked after’ children.

In October, we led a delegation to Glasgow to learn about best practice developments in meeting the needs of unaccompanied asylum seeking children.

The Independent Asylum Commission published its wide ranging review of the UK asylum system in March. In July, we co-hosted, with the Refugee Action Group, the Commission’s launch of its report in Northern Ireland. The Commission had earlier taken evidence at the Law Centre from a number of organisations working in the asylum field. At the launch, the Commission drew attention to some of the issues specific to Northern Ireland, including removal and detention. The launch was opened by the two junior ministers in OFMDFM. Minister Jeffrey Donaldson spoke of the importance of ensuring that those seeking sanctuary are ‘treated in a manner which extends a warm hand of friendship and care’. Minister Gerry Kelly highlighted the need for ‘services that are driven by compassion and understanding.’

We have since met with OFMDFM to follow up on immigration and asylum issues.

Helping children and young people

We obtained indefinite leave to remain in the UK for a Nigerian teenage client and her young child who appeared to have been trafficked into the UK. While she was awaiting a decision on her immigration position, her support was the responsibility of the local health and social services trust. The trust was giving her a level of support but this did not fully meet the family’s needs. We persuaded the trust that under the Children (NI) Order 1995 she should have been given ‘looked after child’ status while she was under eighteen. The trust agreed and is now providing her with additional support as she settles here. We understand that this approach will now be formalised in Departmental guidance to trusts.

Our legal assistance has proved essential to many asylum seekers who had their initial claims refused by the UK government. We represented successfully, at appeal, clients from many countries including Iran, Sudan and Zimbabwe. These people are now establishing a new life in Northern Ireland.

Dealing with trafficking

At the sharp end of exploitation are people who find themselves victims of trafficking for labour or sexual exploitation. There are a growing number of victims of trafficking in Northern Ireland, including children.

One of our clients is a young man in his early teens who appears to have been trafficked as a younger child for the purposes of forced labour. We have helped him to gain protection from further exploitation and make an asylum application. We have been working closely with social services who are caring for him and ECPAT UK, a London based organisation with expertise in child trafficking.

In July, we brought together a number of organisations working on this issue as well as the PSNI and the Republic’s Department of Justice to explore how it is being addressed on both sides of the border. This North-South Immigration Forum meeting was co-hosted with the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI). Alison Harvey, General Secretary of the Immigration Lawyers Practitioners Association, gave an overview of the legal response to the problem at UK and European level. Delphine O’Keeffe of the Migrant Rights Centre in Dublin analysed how trafficking for labour exploitation is being challenged in the Republic. Nusha Yonkova highlighted ICI’s concern about the Immigration Residence and Protection Bill.

In October, the Law Centre was a UK representative at an international legal conference in Washington considering civil remedies for victims of trafficking.

We secured funding from Lloyds TSB Foundation to publish a booklet in fifteen languages aimed at victims of trafficking. ‘Exploited?’ briefly explains their rights and the services the Law Centre can offer them. We are working together with ethnic minority support groups and statutory bodies to ensure that it reaches those who need it.

Mental Health: Giving people a voice

The Law Centre has made reform of mental health and learning disability law a priority. A Queen’s University research commissioned by the Law Centre in 2004 had identified an important gap in legal advice and representation for patients in mental health institutions. This was also a key finding of the Bamford Review.

Asserting our clients’ rights

Our mental health casework unit has been working with our policy unit on strategies for improving mental health law and services. This year, we launched a new initiative to improve access to legal advice for people detained in hospital. We are now operating legal clinics in Gransha, the Mater and City hospitals and in Knockbracken Health Care Park. This is designed to help people understand their legal rights while in hospital.

Building capacity

We are building capacity in the sector to deliver good quality mental health legal advice. Our ‘Introduction to Mental Health Law’ training sessions were well attended by a range of people from the advice sector and the legal profession.

Working for change

This year, we convened the Mental Health and Learning Disability Alliance to give voice to concerns about how far the recommendations of the Bamford Review will be implemented. In a response to the draft programme for government, we called for additional funds to be allocated to mental health and learning disability services in the budget. We wrote to the Minister of Health expressing the Alliance’s concerns about the gaps in representation of service users and carers on the Bamford Board. In May, the Alliance met with the Health Committee to outline its key policy priorities.

The Alliance’s June meeting heard Professor Roy McClelland, Chair of the Bamford Board, give the Board’s analysis of the direction of mental health and learning disability policy. In August, we invited Andy Bell, Chair of the Mental Health Alliance in England and Wales, to share his experience of campaigning for mental health law reform. The Alliance made a full reply to the Executive’s response to the Bamford Review while the Law Centre focused on the issue of law reform.

Community Care: Caring for the young and old

Care of the elderly

Early this year, we sought to reignite the discussion on the future funding of long term care for the elderly by inviting Niall Dickson, Chief Executive of the King’s Fund, to give a keynote address sharing research findings from a consultation led by the King’s Fund.Following this, we have been working with the Rights in Community Care Group to develop research into the potential funding models for meeting the needs of older people for quality and accessible care. In June, the Assembly passed a motion supporting free personal care, and the Minister has promised a review of costs. We hope this research will allow us and others to be able to make a timely and effective intervention in the debate.

We provided training on community care law to Age Concern and Help the Aged to improve their capacity to deliver high quality advice to older people.

Services for young people

The lack of appropriate respite services for young people has emerged as a major issue in our work.

We lodged judicial review applications for two young men in relation to a reduction in their residential respite service. They both have complex care needs and had regular breaks away from their families in a children’s unit. This stopped when they turned nineteen. There was no adequate alternative for them until, as a result of the court proceedings, a room in a unit was converted to meet their needs. The families are now able to plan for a break from caring and the young men have an appropriate respite placement.

Training health & social services workers

We delivered eight days of legal training to health and social services staff. We work with the trusts to establish their training needs and deliver courses, ranging this year from Mental Incapacity and Decision Making, through to Community Care and Migrant Workers.

Social Security: Challenging poverty

When benefits go wrong

For people on benefits or tax credits, a delay, an underpayment or the recovery of an overpayment can create a crisis. Our social security caseworkers regularly deal with such situations.

This year, we intervened to resolve a long standing problem being caused by an IT deficiency at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Two clients had been left without tax credits for months followed by manual payments for two years, causing problems in receiving milk tokens. The crisis occurred when the manual payments were deemed to be overpayments by the IT system and HMRC threatened court proceedings to recover the money. The Law Centre liaised with HMRC solicitors and it has now been accepted that there was no overpayment.

The impact of welfare reform

Under the banner of ‘simplification’ the government has brought forward a series of social security reforms.

Proposals to restrict the backdating period for claims for Housing Benefit and Pension Credit from twelve months to three months met with widespread opposition. We submitted comments to the Social Security Advisory Committee, arguing that this would exacerbate poverty among some of the most vulnerable groups.

We were equally concerned with the government’s proposals on benefits for lone parents. From November 2008, the plans are to move lone parents off Income Support and onto Jobseeker’s Allowance (and therefore be available for work) when their youngest child reaches twelve years of age. By November 2009, this would extend to lone parents with a youngest child of ten and by 2010, to lone parents with a youngest child aged seven. The proposals also suggest that lone parents with a youngest child aged five will be ‘encouraged towards more active work engagement’.

We outlined our concerns to the Social Security Advisory Committee about the impact of these proposals in Northern Ireland. We briefed the DSD Committee, arguing that it will be difficult to implement this policy here where there are not enough childcare facilities and where there is no lead Department responsible for childcare. To expose lone parents to the risk of the sanctions associated with the Jobseeker’s Allowance scheme does nothing to alleviate child poverty. Further, the government needs to find ways to ensure that the move from benefit to work does make an appreciable difference to the income of lone parent families.

We lobbied successfully for a change to regulations to allow more flexibility for people with disabilities to serve as panel members on social security appeal tribunals and keep entitlement to Incapacity Benefit and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

Developing frontline advice on benefits

Through our Welfare Rights Adviser Programme (WRAP), we help to develop the expertise of frontline workers in signposting and advising clients on their benefit entitlements. In 2008, we ran this accredited programme in both our Belfast and Derry offices. Participants include those working in the independent advice sector and in local government. The course runs over eight days and is accredited by the Open College Network. It carries twelve credits for OCN Level 2 and 21 credits for OCN Level 3.
We have developed a course on ESA to bring advisers up to speed on the new benefit. This has been added to the WRAP course as well as being taught as a stand-alone course. The demand for the ESA course was so great that extra courses have been run in Belfast and Omagh.

Social Justice: Fostering Access to Justice

Access to justice is an overarching theme of our work.

Legal aid

We argued strongly and successfully against proposals by the Legal Services Commission to include the equity value of people’s homes in calculating their resources to decide if they are eligible for legal aid. This would have excluded many people from receiving legal aid and would have had a disproportionate impact on older people who had finished paying off their mortgages.

Community legal services

We responded to the Legal Services Commission’s consultation on the development of community legal services. We argued that community legal services can make an important contribution to tackling social exclusion. We recommended pilot projects for victims of domestic violence, housing debt and employment representation as immediate priorities.

Court action and social change

We hosted a discussion arranged by Atlantic Philanthropies on the findings of a South African research project on the use of court action to bring about social change. Local organisations attending were interested in the extent to which many of the issues faced by people who use the law in South Africa are similar to those encountered here. The day helped us to step back and look at how we can improve our strategic casework through better planning, more engagement with interest groups and use of research.

The Law Centre has been at the forefront of developments on tribunal reform. During the summer of 2007, we wrote a policy paper for the Tribunal Presidents Forum on developing an Administrative Justice Tribunals Council. We lobbied OFMFDM and the Northern Ireland Court Service on speeding up tribunal reform. The two Departments submitted a paper to the Northern Ireland Executive earlier this year on how to move ahead depending on the introduction of devolved arrangements for justice and policing.The theme of our December 2007 AGM was tribunal reform. Minister of Justice David Hanson emphasised the commitment to unifying and modernising the administration of tribunals. Martin Partington of the Law Commission for England and Wales gave a progress report on reform in Britain.

In July 2008, we held a seminar to discuss the way forward. The speakers were Lord Newton, the Chair of AJTC in Britain, Sir Robert Carnwath, the Senior President of Tribunals for England and Wales. Key players within tribunal reform, including senior civil servants, local tribunal judiciary, academics and voluntary sector advisers, attended. To an extent, progress will be determined by decisions on devolution. Nonetheless, the Law Centre is seeking to commission research on the key issues for tribunal reform, and to hold a conference in partnership with other interested organisations during 2009.

Outreach: Strengthening the Advice Sector

Advice Services Alliance

The Law Centre works in partnership with Advice NI and Citizens Advice in the Advice Services Alliance (ASA). The ASA promotes the need for effective, properly funded voluntary sector advice services.

In September 2007, DSD published Opening Doors, its strategy for advice services. The strategy received the endorsement of the Northern Ireland Executive. As part of the strategy, ASA was charged with producing reports on the way ahead for quality assurance, IT and training. Three reports were submitted to the DSD in March 2008 and are now subject to consultation.

ASA is seeking to persuade the DSD to bid for additional resources for advice services so that the strategy can be effectively rolled out once the Review of Public Administration changes to local councils come into effect.

Specialist legal service

As a specialist legal service, the Law Centre has an important role to play in supporting frontline advice agencies and strengthening the sector.

Our services are widely used by member agencies from the voluntary sector, the legal profession and other agencies providing advice such as MLA constituency offices and trade unions.

Bringing people together

In June, a ‘speed-matching’ event was held at the Law Centre, to bring together media and voluntary organisations. Sponsored by the National Union of Journalists, Northern Ireland Council on Voluntary Action and the Law Centre, it gave voluntary organisations the opportunity to explain their work and issues to journalists on a one to one basis, and to make useful contacts. This innovative event was a resounding success.

Practitioner forum meetings in Belfast and Derry bring together advisers to share good practice and feed into our work on community care, mental health, immigration, social security and migrant worker issues. This year, external speakers included the NI Ombudsman, the Employment and Support Allowance project team and the Legal Services Commission.

Training frontline advisers

In addition to programmed courses, we supply training on request from member organisations and other advice agencies. This year, for example, we gave training sessions for South Tyrone Empowerment Project on employment and social security rights of migrant workers. We lectured on human rights and on mental health law at the University of Ulster.

Sharing information and skills

Law Centre information services – the website, library and publications – are aimed at helping our membership keep up to date with developments in law, policy and practice to strengthen their frontline work.  We continue to develop the extensive library, information and research service which is open to all members.

Our casework and policy bulletins keep members informed on current issues and cases. We have written extensively in Frontline on the impact of welfare reform, the new ESA, the Bamford Review, tribunal reform and the Private Tenancy Order.

We complement this with legal briefings for members, MLAs and social services on human rights in public authorities’ decision making, duties to care leavers, social services’ duties to provide accommodation to migrant workers, tax credits, immigration and marriage/civil partnership and cohabitation.

This year, we have incorporated tax credit briefings into our Encyclopedia of Rights CD. This will ensure more in-depth, regularly updated information. The CD also has information on benefits, notes on employment rights, community care law and immigration and marriage/civil partnership.

Reaching out through our website

We reach beyond member agencies through our website, which carries our briefings, policy responses and the Encyclopedia of Rights. An important source of practical information, the website receives increasing numbers of visitors. While we distributed 14,900 paper publications in 2007-08, over 86,800 were downloaded from the site.

Working together

Staff involvement in working groups and committees:

• Housing Rights Management Committee – Vice Chair
• Community Foundation NI - trustee
• Advice Services Alliance – secretary
• Refugee Action Group – Co-Chair
• CAB Derry Management Committee
• Executive Board of the Committee on the Administration of Justice
• Legal Services Commission (NI)
• OFMDFM / DEL Migrant Worker Employment, Inspection and Enforcement Working Group, Inform-ation Working Group, Best Practice Working Group
• Health Promotion Agency NI specialist reference team to develop a course called ‘Mental Health First Aid’ for Northern Ireland
• Equality Coalition
• Human Rights Consortium
• Child Poverty Coalition with Save the Children
• Employment Lawyers Group
• Advice Services Alliance working groups
• Association of Information Manager
• Library Education Advisory Group
• Social Security Advisory Committee