Post by Patrick Torsney on Jan 24, 2011 14:49:30 GMT 1
In the Money section of Saturday's (22nd January) Guardian there was a good profile piece of Gwyneth King, Welfare Benefits soilcitor at the Mary Ward Legal Centre - what she does and why she does it. We have reproduced it in entirety below - see the link at the end for the original piece
As I wait in the reception of the Mary Ward Legal Centre, a woman walks through from one of the offices to say she has had some success in protecting her client from a lender. "They shouldn't be allowed to lend, the way they've behaved," she tells one of the administration assistants.
I am here to interview Gwyneth King, head of the welfare benefits team at the centre. King, like all the solicitors at Mary Ward, provides help for those who qualify for legal aid. She specialises in advising on claims relating to benefits, but her colleagues also deal with housing and employment problems.
Mary Ward Legal Centre is a charity based in Camden, central London, established by a 19th-century philanthropist who realised there was a need for a free legal service for poor people in the area. Now affiliated to the Law Centres Federation, it recently had its Legal Services Commission contract renewed despite cutbacks; similar centres elsewhere have been less fortunate.
Nevertheless, a large chunk of the work that King and the rest of the benefits team were doing – outreach advice in Hillingdon and Hounslow in west London, where there are big migrant communities – has now been chopped. This means people from other boroughs wanting help from the centre have to come to the office – not so easy if you are disabled or have young children, or simply can't afford the train fares. "So just at the point where benefits are being cut, and people really need help to challenge the related decisions, we are no longer able to provide it to them," she says.
The outreach sessions in the outer London boroughs were originally established because the Legal Services Commission had identified various "advice deserts". "It seems contradictory for them to now say that the outreach work is not needed," says King. "Hayes Citizens Advice, where I ran my sessions, has indicated it will not have any other organisations in the area to make specialist referrals to."
King studied law at De Montfort University in Leicester and first learned about legal aid while doing volunteer work at a Citizens Advice Bureau. "I ended up doing it for a year to get experience," she says. "Then I got a job at a criminal defence law firm giving benefits advice to the clients."
It must have been an eye-opener for a 22-year-old from a middle-class background: a lot of the clients were in trouble for allegedly committing petty theft to feed their heroin habits, many were HIV positive or were living with Aids, and their lifestyles made them hard to contact.
Nonetheless, King's personality seems perfectly suited to the job. Soberly dressed and softly spoken, she has an empathetic approach to her clients and their problems. After she has been telling me about them for a while, I suggest that she must have the patience of a saint. "Ha! My family wouldn't agree with that," she laughs.
English is a second language for many of her clients, some have mental health problems and many have worries about basic needs such as feeding their families and keeping a roof over their heads. Others become vocally aggressive because of the frustration they feel at dealing with the authorities.
How does King, a slim, elfin woman, deal with that? "We try to be informal but quite often clients see us as part of the establishment they perceive to be against them. We're supposed to have a panic alarm, but I've never used it. You develop ways to calm people down, to get across that you are trying to help."
She herself gets angry at the prejudice and ignorance some of her clients face – the "they're over here just to claim our benefits" attitude. "People from the European Union are exercising their right to move freely between member states. We have the same right, and the number of people leaving the UK for other states balances out the number coming to the UK."
Many of her other clients are asylum seekers. "To be given refugee status you have to prove that you have had an awful time, that you have been persecuted, at risk of torture or actually tortured. It can take years to get a decision, and you can be detained during that time with your children, and until you get a decision you cannot claim benefits." Although people in this situation are given financial help by the UK Border Agency, the payments are considerably lower than "benefit level" – so well below subsistence level.
King joined Mary Ward in 2006, after taking her legal practice course in Manchester and gaining more legal aid experience; in 2009 she qualified as a solicitor advocate, which means she can represent her clients in any court, rather than hiring a barrister. In the area of benefits, she can represent clients at the high court in judicial review applications, when government departments or local authorities are failing in their duties. This rarely happens, though, says King: a local authority that is dragging its heels is usually spurred into action by the mere threat of a court case.
That said, the centre is likely to have a case going to the European Court of Justice in 2011 relating to whether self-employed people from elsewhere in the EU can claim benefits in the UK. "People from the EU have free movement between member states under the Treaty of Rome, but the benefits law has become convoluted," she says.
The client involved, a Polish woman, was working as a self-employed cleaner until her partner had to return to Poland. She had to stop work temporarily to arrange childcare when he left, but was told she wasn't eligible for income support even though she had been paying tax and national insurance and her children were in schools in the UK.
"They said that because she wasn't a British national and hadn't attained permanent residence, the only way she could be paid an income benefit would be as a 'work seeker', ie, claiming jobseeker's allowance. But she didn't qualify for that because of her childcare commitments," says King.
King and her colleagues are each expected to open six cases a week and close six opened in previous weeks. She currently has 130 open cases. Client interviews are fitted into 45-minute slots: "We have to get as much information as possible in that time – if you haven't managed to get everything you need, you have to phone clients," says King.
Clients have both an online and a paper-based file, and the solicitors have to enter the time they spend on a case, in six-minute units. The charity is allowed to generate costs of up to £167 per case – equivalent to three hours' work. It receives no more legal aid if the solicitors exceed this unless the case takes nine hours or more and thus becomes an "exceptional case". The charity is then paid £56 an hour.
Needless to say, the offices are scruffy and cramped – no money has been squandered on surroundings. And the staff are mainly women, with just three men out of a total of 29. Like most roles in the charity sector, the lawyers working for Mary Ward earn a fraction of the typical £200 to £400 an hour they could demand in the commercial world. "If we were in private practice with the same experience, we'd be earning up to four times as much. But that's not why we are doing this," says King. "If you choose to practice social welfare law, that's a vocation. I just couldn't be a corporate lawyer – I wouldn't find it fulfilling."
I sit in on an interview with one client, an eastern European woman whose employment and support allowance (ESA) payments have been stopped. She had to give up her office job after being injured in a car accident and half way through explaining this, she starts crying. "I feel so useless and ashamed," she says. "I want to earn my own money. I can't lead my life. I don't see anybody, I don't go anywhere. I only go out for hospital and legal appointments."
Another member of the team, Paramjeet Lehl, offers tissues and a glass of water, and waits patiently until the woman has recovered. Going through her experiences may be painful, but providing full information is necessary if the case is to be successful.
As the meeting progresses, the client becomes increasingly fidgety: it's clear her back is hurting as she keeps standing to release the pain. Although she has a long list of problems, she has come through a medical assessment with zero points (you need 15 points to prove you can't work and qualify for the benefit). The client protests that the doctor assessing her has filled in answers to questions she wasn't asked, and says her own GP was shocked that she failed to qualify.
Lehl explains that a half to three quarters of people claiming ESA are awarded zero points in their assessment, but adds: "You've got the opportunity to refute what [the assessor] said." It will take up to six months before her appeal is heard.
The delays can be very frustrating, says King. But maybe that makes the end rewards more intense. She cites the example of a Somalian client, who had been granted refugee status after a long appeal process but was then having problems getting disability living allowance (DLA).
"One of his eyes was brown and the other white because cigarettes had been stubbed out in it. He had bullet scars all down his front and he had witnessed members of his family being killed. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," she says.
"He was young and suffering post-traumatic stress disorder along with the physical health problems from the after-effects of his torture. When he heard that he would finally be getting DLA, and could find a carer, that was the first time I saw him smile."
Curriculum vitae
Salary From £28,000 to £39,000.
Hours
9.30am to 5.30pm (flexible around core hours of 10am to 4pm), with 30 days holiday rising to 34 days after four years.
Work-life balance
"I don't take work home but I worry about clients: emotionally it can be very draining. There was one client I spoke to on a Friday who suffered from depression and he sounded very low. I worried about him all weekend. The first thing I did that Monday was call him: he was fine."
Best thing
"It's so fulfilling when you get a good result for someone. You just can't beat it."
Worst thing
"You do feel you are banging your head against a brick wall sometimes. You'll call an office about something you've written to them about. They'll say they can't find the right form so they can't help you. That's after you've held for 20 minutes. It makes you realise how difficult it is for the clients."
The link is here: www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jan/22/working-life-legal-adviser
As I wait in the reception of the Mary Ward Legal Centre, a woman walks through from one of the offices to say she has had some success in protecting her client from a lender. "They shouldn't be allowed to lend, the way they've behaved," she tells one of the administration assistants.
I am here to interview Gwyneth King, head of the welfare benefits team at the centre. King, like all the solicitors at Mary Ward, provides help for those who qualify for legal aid. She specialises in advising on claims relating to benefits, but her colleagues also deal with housing and employment problems.
Mary Ward Legal Centre is a charity based in Camden, central London, established by a 19th-century philanthropist who realised there was a need for a free legal service for poor people in the area. Now affiliated to the Law Centres Federation, it recently had its Legal Services Commission contract renewed despite cutbacks; similar centres elsewhere have been less fortunate.
Nevertheless, a large chunk of the work that King and the rest of the benefits team were doing – outreach advice in Hillingdon and Hounslow in west London, where there are big migrant communities – has now been chopped. This means people from other boroughs wanting help from the centre have to come to the office – not so easy if you are disabled or have young children, or simply can't afford the train fares. "So just at the point where benefits are being cut, and people really need help to challenge the related decisions, we are no longer able to provide it to them," she says.
The outreach sessions in the outer London boroughs were originally established because the Legal Services Commission had identified various "advice deserts". "It seems contradictory for them to now say that the outreach work is not needed," says King. "Hayes Citizens Advice, where I ran my sessions, has indicated it will not have any other organisations in the area to make specialist referrals to."
King studied law at De Montfort University in Leicester and first learned about legal aid while doing volunteer work at a Citizens Advice Bureau. "I ended up doing it for a year to get experience," she says. "Then I got a job at a criminal defence law firm giving benefits advice to the clients."
It must have been an eye-opener for a 22-year-old from a middle-class background: a lot of the clients were in trouble for allegedly committing petty theft to feed their heroin habits, many were HIV positive or were living with Aids, and their lifestyles made them hard to contact.
Nonetheless, King's personality seems perfectly suited to the job. Soberly dressed and softly spoken, she has an empathetic approach to her clients and their problems. After she has been telling me about them for a while, I suggest that she must have the patience of a saint. "Ha! My family wouldn't agree with that," she laughs.
English is a second language for many of her clients, some have mental health problems and many have worries about basic needs such as feeding their families and keeping a roof over their heads. Others become vocally aggressive because of the frustration they feel at dealing with the authorities.
How does King, a slim, elfin woman, deal with that? "We try to be informal but quite often clients see us as part of the establishment they perceive to be against them. We're supposed to have a panic alarm, but I've never used it. You develop ways to calm people down, to get across that you are trying to help."
She herself gets angry at the prejudice and ignorance some of her clients face – the "they're over here just to claim our benefits" attitude. "People from the European Union are exercising their right to move freely between member states. We have the same right, and the number of people leaving the UK for other states balances out the number coming to the UK."
Many of her other clients are asylum seekers. "To be given refugee status you have to prove that you have had an awful time, that you have been persecuted, at risk of torture or actually tortured. It can take years to get a decision, and you can be detained during that time with your children, and until you get a decision you cannot claim benefits." Although people in this situation are given financial help by the UK Border Agency, the payments are considerably lower than "benefit level" – so well below subsistence level.
King joined Mary Ward in 2006, after taking her legal practice course in Manchester and gaining more legal aid experience; in 2009 she qualified as a solicitor advocate, which means she can represent her clients in any court, rather than hiring a barrister. In the area of benefits, she can represent clients at the high court in judicial review applications, when government departments or local authorities are failing in their duties. This rarely happens, though, says King: a local authority that is dragging its heels is usually spurred into action by the mere threat of a court case.
That said, the centre is likely to have a case going to the European Court of Justice in 2011 relating to whether self-employed people from elsewhere in the EU can claim benefits in the UK. "People from the EU have free movement between member states under the Treaty of Rome, but the benefits law has become convoluted," she says.
The client involved, a Polish woman, was working as a self-employed cleaner until her partner had to return to Poland. She had to stop work temporarily to arrange childcare when he left, but was told she wasn't eligible for income support even though she had been paying tax and national insurance and her children were in schools in the UK.
"They said that because she wasn't a British national and hadn't attained permanent residence, the only way she could be paid an income benefit would be as a 'work seeker', ie, claiming jobseeker's allowance. But she didn't qualify for that because of her childcare commitments," says King.
King and her colleagues are each expected to open six cases a week and close six opened in previous weeks. She currently has 130 open cases. Client interviews are fitted into 45-minute slots: "We have to get as much information as possible in that time – if you haven't managed to get everything you need, you have to phone clients," says King.
Clients have both an online and a paper-based file, and the solicitors have to enter the time they spend on a case, in six-minute units. The charity is allowed to generate costs of up to £167 per case – equivalent to three hours' work. It receives no more legal aid if the solicitors exceed this unless the case takes nine hours or more and thus becomes an "exceptional case". The charity is then paid £56 an hour.
Needless to say, the offices are scruffy and cramped – no money has been squandered on surroundings. And the staff are mainly women, with just three men out of a total of 29. Like most roles in the charity sector, the lawyers working for Mary Ward earn a fraction of the typical £200 to £400 an hour they could demand in the commercial world. "If we were in private practice with the same experience, we'd be earning up to four times as much. But that's not why we are doing this," says King. "If you choose to practice social welfare law, that's a vocation. I just couldn't be a corporate lawyer – I wouldn't find it fulfilling."
I sit in on an interview with one client, an eastern European woman whose employment and support allowance (ESA) payments have been stopped. She had to give up her office job after being injured in a car accident and half way through explaining this, she starts crying. "I feel so useless and ashamed," she says. "I want to earn my own money. I can't lead my life. I don't see anybody, I don't go anywhere. I only go out for hospital and legal appointments."
Another member of the team, Paramjeet Lehl, offers tissues and a glass of water, and waits patiently until the woman has recovered. Going through her experiences may be painful, but providing full information is necessary if the case is to be successful.
As the meeting progresses, the client becomes increasingly fidgety: it's clear her back is hurting as she keeps standing to release the pain. Although she has a long list of problems, she has come through a medical assessment with zero points (you need 15 points to prove you can't work and qualify for the benefit). The client protests that the doctor assessing her has filled in answers to questions she wasn't asked, and says her own GP was shocked that she failed to qualify.
Lehl explains that a half to three quarters of people claiming ESA are awarded zero points in their assessment, but adds: "You've got the opportunity to refute what [the assessor] said." It will take up to six months before her appeal is heard.
The delays can be very frustrating, says King. But maybe that makes the end rewards more intense. She cites the example of a Somalian client, who had been granted refugee status after a long appeal process but was then having problems getting disability living allowance (DLA).
"One of his eyes was brown and the other white because cigarettes had been stubbed out in it. He had bullet scars all down his front and he had witnessed members of his family being killed. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," she says.
"He was young and suffering post-traumatic stress disorder along with the physical health problems from the after-effects of his torture. When he heard that he would finally be getting DLA, and could find a carer, that was the first time I saw him smile."
Curriculum vitae
Salary From £28,000 to £39,000.
Hours
9.30am to 5.30pm (flexible around core hours of 10am to 4pm), with 30 days holiday rising to 34 days after four years.
Work-life balance
"I don't take work home but I worry about clients: emotionally it can be very draining. There was one client I spoke to on a Friday who suffered from depression and he sounded very low. I worried about him all weekend. The first thing I did that Monday was call him: he was fine."
Best thing
"It's so fulfilling when you get a good result for someone. You just can't beat it."
Worst thing
"You do feel you are banging your head against a brick wall sometimes. You'll call an office about something you've written to them about. They'll say they can't find the right form so they can't help you. That's after you've held for 20 minutes. It makes you realise how difficult it is for the clients."
The link is here: www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jan/22/working-life-legal-adviser
