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About the Project
The Oasis Nurture project is an innovative embedded structure within a school setting at Oasis Academy. The project provides holistic, child-centred services for children and families that are in need of bespoke support. Often this means that they need to access support to ensure that the essentials like housing, benefits, immigration, community care, and special educational needs are in place, so that they can continue with other therapeutic aspirational aspects through psychotherapy, mentoring, positive experiences, and educational support.
The Therapeutic Legal Advocacy Team will not be like a regular legal clinic. It will be delivering therapeutic advocacy support in a space that its clients can easily access us for support, rather than them having to find us at an external location. As a result, the team can be more effective and responsive to situations, preventing a crisis from escalating, triaging and finding immediate solutions, whilst it works on a long-term strategy.
How does it work?
Students will be working with Team Leaders, who have decades of trauma-informed experience within law, social work and psychotherapy, and will be able assist all students on placement in developing their therapeutic communication skills and understanding the fundamentals of trauma-informed and reflective practice.
Working under the management of a qualified solicitor, who will be in a non-practicing role, students will be engaging directly with local authorities, the Home Office, Social Services, the DWP, housing associations, and schools to ensure that the rights that are being violated are robustly advocated for. They will be using a combination of understanding the way that statutory bodies operate in practical terms and applying the law to advocate directly with the relevant parties, to ensure that costly and time-consuming litigation does not have to be pursued.
What we are looking for:
The successful candidates will be able to demonstrate their commitment to this area of work and be academically high achieving.
Desirable:
Has completed/is completing at least 2 or more of any optional relevant course modules (LAWS0223: Criminal Processes: Evidence, Sentencing, and Advanced Topics in Substantive Criminal Law, LAWS0225: Law, Innovation and Public Policy, LAWS0220: Administrative Law, LAWS0035: Criminology, LAWS0033: Alternative Dispute Resolution, LAWS0029: Health Care Law, LAWS0030: Access to Justice and Community Engagement, LAWS0031: Human Rights in the UK, LAWS0024: Family Law).
Time Commitment:
Students are expected to commit atleast one day per week, this can be split over the course of 2 days (i.e. morning/afternoons) if preferred.
Training:
There will be comprehensive induction training covering the areas of law involved in the advocacy, essentials such as safeguarding and GDPR, advocacy role play and multidisciplinary training from the other team members. You will also be required to undertake training delivered by the CAJ prior to beginning placements.
How to apply:
Please complete this form to apply. The deadline for applications, 5 pm on 20th November 2023.
If you have any questions about this opportunity, please contact Ram Sabaratnam at ram.sabaratnam.19@ucl.ac.uk.