Increase Public Understanding

CHALKY LAW CHAT

Grant: £74,320
November 14, 2018

CLC, have developed a prototype digital solution to address the unmet legal needs of children - a non-linear Chatbot built through Google’s DialogFlow using natural language programming to provide accessible legal information to young people in response to basic legal queries.

The Prototype, focusing on 3 areas of law – Employment, Homelessness, FAQs on At What Age Can I.

Over 12 months the Project will develop the Chatbot to:

• Add additional areas of law
• Further develop/ refine the technology, functionality and natural language capacity through increasing the range of channels e.g. Skype and You Tube
• Have a low key “launch” enabling wider market testing
• Plan full launch in early 2020
• Undertake further business planning and fundraising to enable scaling of the project

The long-term vision is to add a “Live Chat” function supported by volunteer lawyers/legal students to provide advice “out of hours”.

Make Our Rights Reality Year 3

Grant: £193,413
July 4, 2018

A national programme designed to inspire disadvantaged young people’s participation in public legal education and PLE-related social action activities to increase their own and others’ legal capability.

Court hire fees for Bar Mock Trial – Derry heat

Grant: £2,360
November 23, 2017

This project involves the additional costs incurred for the hire of the Londonderry Courthouse for the purposes of running a Bar Mock Trial competition there.

Make Our Rights Reality - Year 2

Grant: £193,413
July 5, 2017

MORR is a pioneering major national programme designed to inspire disadvantaged young people’s participation in public legal education and PLE-related social action activities to increase their own and others’ legal capability.

MORR will foster opportunities for young people (aged 15-24) to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to engage in civic society as informed and responsible citizens; supporting them to become forces for change by giving them a voice to shape a society in which the law is seen by them and others as a tool for tackling everyday problems. MORR’s vision includes a cultural shift so that public services and the wider community see the value of young people understanding their legal rights.

Working in partnership with a network of carefully selected front-line legal and youth agencies across England, Youth Access will lead the development and implementation of this unique and innovative national project. MORR will harness an unrivalled breadth of expertise from across the youth and legal sectors coupled with reach to young people across a wide number of communities.

Exploring and improving children and young people’s understanding of their legal rights as suspects: A scoping study

Grant: £57,600
June 21, 2017

The criminal process adopts an adult rather than child-focused approach when dealing with children and young people (CYP) as suspects. There has been very little research undertaken which explores suspects legal rights from CYPs’ perspective. In this scoping study, the stories of CYP will contribute to the development of a robust evidence base from which to inform change. Open-ended questions will be asked about what they understand to be their legal rights and how they exercised such rights. How CYP were treated in the criminal process will also be investigated; if legal protections were upheld, and whether decision-making was fair and just. The findings will be used to help inform the design of electronic interventions intended to improve suspects’ understanding of their legal rights.

CYP will also be asked for their views on how complex information about their legal rights can best be presented to assist them in making informed decisions. This will include exploring gamification and the creation of tasks that engage and encourage knowledge and skill development. Discussion with CYP will explore using different formats to help make complex information accessible to CYP of different ages, educational and mental abilities.

Advancement of Public Legal Education (PLE) for young people in Wales

Grant: £60,000
June 21, 2017

This project aims to build on the Citizenship Foundation’s work over the past six months, to improve the legal capability of young people in Wales. It responds to needs identified in and out of schools, within the legal profession, by the Welsh Government and academic institutions.

It will,

• continue to work with secondary schools and colleges to better understand their PLE needs, and shape initiatives accordingly.
• continue to increase the diversity and number of schools participating in the Mock Trials competitions – encouraging new schools from less advantaged areas to take part in new and existing heats.
• make new bilingual Law in Wales resources available for free to all schools via Hwb (the Welsh Government’s schools digital platform) and through the SmartLaw website – and adapt existing resources in accordance with the Welsh Government’s devolved powers.
• continue to create flexible and affordable opportunities for legal and other professionals to further PLE in schools and colleges.

A feasibility study on delivering PLE to young people outside the formal education sector – including youth groups, roma people and pupil referral units will also be undertaken.

Aiming for 2020: Increasing PLE in Northern Ireland

Grant: £50,000
November 9, 2016

This project focuses on delivering the Lawyers in Schools and the Mock Trial Competitions, Smartlaw programme, together with the introduction of newly developed initiatives in Northern Ireland. All the SmartLaw initiatives are designed to increase young people’s legal capability by up-skilling non-specialist intermediaries – usually teachers and legal professionals.

Law in Children’s Lives: Secondary analysis

Grant: £19,297
July 6, 2016

This project undertakes secondary analysis of data gathered as part of the research project “Law in Children’s Lives” which used a tablet based game to explore the legal understanding of children aged 8-11 years.

This project follows on from an 18 month study, Law in Children’s Lives (LICL) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under its transformative research grant scheme. In this study we worked with children to develop a tablet-based game, Adventures with Lex which we then used as a research tool to assess the legal understanding of children aged 8-11 years and to find out in particular how far, if at all, these children perceive themselves to be empowered by law in their everyday lives.

Increasing the quantity of quality PLE resources

Grant: £21,150
June 22, 2016

The aim of the project is to affect a measurable improvement of young people in Northern Ireland’s understanding of the law and their capability to use it by:

• Increasing the number of young people from economically disadvantaged areas of Northern Ireland that take part in the Citizenship Foundation’s Bar Mock Trial
• Increasing the number of young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds in Northern Ireland that can take part in the Citizenship Foundation’s Lawyers in Schools programme.
• Increasing the number of young people at Integrated Colleges in Northern Ireland who take part in Bar Mock Trials and Lawyers in Schools.

The project will do this by,

• Establishing a second Bar Mock Trials heat in a Derry in 2016 to; make it more accessible to more schools and colleges, build on the experience of and learnings from the second Belfast heat 2015 of Bar Mock Trials and build a sustainable model for the future.
• Deliver 12 Lawyers in Schools sessions at a school or college in Northern Ireland that draws its students from both Catholic and Protestant communities in an area of economic disadvantage – with the objective of building a self-sustaining Lawyers in Schools programme in Northern Ireland.

Advancing public legal education in schools in Wales

Grant: £68,440
June 22, 2016

The overall aim of this project is to affect a measurable improvement in the legal capability of young people in Wales.

We propose to do this by working to achieve the following objectives:

• Formulate a better understanding of the current levels of, and ways that, PLE is delivered in schools in Wales.
• Increase the number of young people from economically disadvantaged areas of Wales that take part in the Citizenship Foundation’s Magistrates’ Court and Bar Mock Trial Competitions, and Lawyers in Schools programme, as part of their schools’ teams.
• Promote the Citizenship Foundation’s Law in Schools website to schools and legal professionals in Wales to increase the number of schools delivering quality public legal education.
• Ensure that all resources and programmes provided are tailored to Welsh schools and life in Wales, and comply with the Learning Wales curriculum requirements.