Legal Needs in Healthcare Settings

Law for Dementia Carers

Grant: £100,000
March 26, 2019

The Law for Dementia Carers (L4DC) project aims to work with Dementia United (DU) with the aim "to make Greater Manchester the best place in the world for dementia care" - to embed access to legal support for carers of people with dementia and recognise its contribution to improving both individual and system-wide health outcomes. Aligning and embedding the outcomes of this project within the DU programme as well as the GM wide Commitment to Carers (Right help and support at the right time) will enable us to embed and sustain this approach after the pilot project. The project will embed human rights education and legal support by means of a three tiered approach:

• to co –develop a blended modular legal support training programme for carers, using their lived experience.
• Co-develop and co-deliver a blended training programme for staff utilising expert carers;
• Co-produce guidance for policy developers, educators and commissioning bodies to influence and embed the learning and outcomes.

Virtual Partnership Law Centre

Grant: £49,870
September 5, 2018

GLC will provide legal services for a remote area of Scotland. It will invest in broadband, computers with Skype, camera/microphone, in private confidential areas in offices and secure scanning to safely upload documents. The aim is to make legal services accessible anywhere in Argyll and Bute Council (A&BC) that has a private room and computer with camera connected to broadband. Skype client appointments will be booked in the same way as other clients, with a solicitor ‘meeting’ a Skype client in a local meeting room.

Reach Advocacy will train and support four people in A&BC to become citizen advocates, who will provide local support to Skype clients. Reach Advocacy are a Scottish Qualifications Authority approved training centre who provide support to individuals, families, carers and communities affected by drugs, alcohol and mental health problems.

Transforming access to justice

Grant: £40,000
June 20, 2018

Developing a chatbot that will provide basic legal advice on social care issues and so increase the ability of care workers to understand and use the law to support people with learning disabilities and their families.

Scoping and design of a pilot to meet legal need within Social Finance Health and Social Care platforms

Grant: £38,250
June 20, 2018

Supporting a collaboration with Social Finance to develop a sustainable model for integrating work that identifies and resolves unmet legal needs into two of Social Finance service platforms that address health and social care needs.

Health Justice Partnership in Suffolk

Grant: £19,855
November 13, 2017

The project aims to improve understanding of how social prescribing in health settings could increase access to social welfare legal advice in Suffolk and reduce health spend by researching current practice and building a robust business case for local health commissioners to fund local advice services to develop and run an effective model of future delivery.

Currently, social prescribing activities in Suffolk are small scale, sporadic and little is known about their nature or the extent of their impact, which is a challenge for advice services seeking to develop a more cohesive, strategic structure for support. The project will address this by identifying existing activities within the county and, by using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, summarise the nature of these activities and the extent to which they are successful in increasing access to social welfare legal advice.

The project will examine the challenges faced by those providing social prescribing activities in the county and summarise perceived gaps and areas for improvement, in addition to potential opportunities, with a view to informing development of a Business Plan. The research will also draw upon best practice from elsewhere in the UK by researching five case studies of social prescribing activities that are considered to be successful models and use them to design a suitable Suffolk model.

An online educational tool: human rights in health and care

Grant: £100,000
November 13, 2017

This project builds on key points from face-to-face education to develop an online educational tool to help patient advocates, advisers, and health/care professionals to use human rights to support patients, securing their rights and protecting them from neglect or abuse and unfair treatment. Whilst people can use the tool to self-advocate, the target will be the many organisations/agencies charged with supporting patients, particularly those with mental health/capacity issues. This includes people living with dementia, autism and/or learning disabilities. Our interactive tool will enable patients/advocates/health workers to identify whether a person’s rights may be at issue and then take them through a series of practical steps and tools to resolve this pre-litigation (e.g. sample letters and worked examples).

The Value of Health-Justice Partnerships – research on outcomes, implementation

Grant: £7,400
September 27, 2017

This funding provides research assistance in the run up to the International Health Justice Workshop in November 2017.

Review of Social Finance Health and Social Care platforms

Grant: £10,000
August 24, 2017

This is a short programme of work to identify areas of unmet legal need within the key ‘platforms’ that Social Finance have established and run in the Health and Social Care space (Shared Lives, Reconnections, Mental Health and Employment, and End of Life Care). Work will identify and explore instances where users involved with these platforms may have unmet legal needs, with a possible view to further platform development / work to address any gaps identified.