Our previous commissions

In 2019/2020 we worked with Mencap and Access Social Care on their Nesta Legal Access Challenge winning project – a legal information chatbot. The chatbot aimed to provide free, accessible legal information 24/7, helping people, including people with a learning disability, to know their social care rights and challenge unlawful decisions. We were asked to provide our expertise on user experience and legal information needs.

In 2017 we carried out a usability review of a draft of the Bar Standard Board’s publication ‘Need help with your immigration and asylum issues? What you need to know’. We looked at how well the guidance met the needs of its audience of vulnerable clients, made suggestions for improvements and edited the document to implement these recommendations. We also assisted with the ‘Vulnerability Good Practice Guide (Immigration Clients)’ – a user guide for barristers working with vulnerable adult immigration clients to help them identify, assess and manage client vulnerabilities in line with good practice.

In September 2022 we delivered two workshops for Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, a not-for-profit social enterprise. The workshops were for organisations supporting refugees in securing accommodation. The programme included modules on Dealing with local authorities in the context of homelessness and Living in temporary accommodation. Each workshop had around 30 attendees.

“I really enjoyed the workshops. It was very interactive and generated lots of interesting discussion among the team members. Very informative and helpful.”

In 2018 Law for Life worked with Central England Law Centre to produce ‘legacy materials’ from their ‘Rights in Practice’ PLE project which helped people to understand that they can challenge public authorities’ decisions about social care, and how to access the right kind of legal advice to do so, within the time limits. We worked with Central England Law Centre to produce three factsheets for a wider audience, building on the learning from the project:

• Problems with day centre placements,
• Taking part in social care consultations, and
• Getting advice to challenge social care decisions.

In late October and early November 2022, we delivered workshops at two conferences for migrant women. The workshops were delivered in Sheffield and London and we focused on raising awareness about reliable information about housing rights for migrant women. We also delivered a session on housing tenancies and on homelessness assistance (with a focus on priority need). Each workshop was attended by around 50 delegates.

In 2019 Law for Life was commissioned to write a new guide to help protesters understand what to expect if they were arrested and charged, and how having a criminal record might affect them.

Between 2018 and 2020 Law for Life worked with the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. GIDS was an NHS specialist service for children and adolescents experiencing difficulties with their gender identity. The aim of the project was to better understand the legal framework underpinning informed medical consent amongst children and young people with gender dysphoria, and to understand and advise on their information needs and those of their parents and carers.

In summer 2020, we were approached by Latin American Women’s Rights Service, an orgnisation run by and for Latin American women living in the UK, who requested urgent training to help them better meet the needs of their service users created by Covid and the lockdowns. In particular, they needed help to understand how they could support their service users facing eviction (including illegal eviction), homelessness and how to work with local authorities, and how to access benefits for those that are entitled to them. We ran a short course on housing and benefits for 20 staff and volunteers.

“Thank you so much for sharing such valuable training with us, it was truly enjoyable and packed with specialist knowledge. Our staff and volunteers are very grateful and I am certain of the positive impact this will have in the service we provide.”

In July 2019 The Leasehold Advisory Service approached us for help to improve information for the public on their website in order to reduce the strain on their helpline. They commissioned us to provide bespoke training for all staff who write for their website, spread over two days, to help them better understand the needs of their users, and be able to meet them.

_{“Work was quickly delivered to a high quality with very good communication throughout. It was a pleasure to work with you”}

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We have been working with We Are DigitalLink opens in a new window (who have the HMCTS contract to provide digital support to people who need help to access online court servicesLink opens in a new window) on a consultancy basis, to enable their staff and project partners to provide more effective help to those who need support to access digital services.

We have provided training packs and sessions to We Are Digital call handlers and partners in community organisations providing face-to-face digital support about how to use the

• Submit an appeal service (for benefit appeals)
• Online money claims service (for people starting or responding to a small claim about money)
• Help with fees service (for people on a low income applying to pay reduced court fees)
• Single Justice Service (for people who are accused of a minor criminal offence and need to respond to a single justice procedure notice)
• Apply for a divorce service
• Apply for probate (for people who need to sort out the estate of someone who has died)

The training not only provided participants with knowledge about what detail to put where on each of the online forms, but also procedural guidance on how to support the person receiving assistance to properly explain their case.  This is important as those with low digital capability very often also have low legal capability and the way the service was tendered precluded the digital support being provided by advice agencies.

We have also worked with We Are Digital on their referrals data and helped them to understand which groups need their service but are unable to access it (and why) and where in the process they are losing more high-need service users so that they can address this.

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Law for Life was approached by a grassroots organisation Women with Hope to deliver a public legal education workshop for their members.
In February 2021 we delivered a session on Dealing with local authorities in the context of homelessness, in pro-bono capacity. Following this, we arranged to deliver two more workshops for them. They focused on housing rights for women in precarious accommodation, with particular reference to those with refugee status or awaiting confirmation of their right to remain. Two of Law for Life’s associates, a housing specialist and an immigration specialist, were involved in the delivery of these sessions.