Lucy Frazer QC MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice with responsibility for Legal Aid, visited the UCL Centre for Access to Justice’s Integrated Legal Advice Clinic (iLAC) in Stratford yesterday. The Clinic had been highlighted as a case study in the recent review of legal aid.
The Minister was particularly interested in discussing the scope for integrating legal and health services and the partnership iLAC had established with a GP practice in Stratford. She met Professor Dame Hazel Genn, Executive Director of the Centre for Access to Justice and Rachel Knowles, the Clinic’s Head of Legal Practice together with housing solicitor, Thul Khan, and welfare benefits advisers Catriona Macdonald and Sarah Joy. She also talked to AJCE students who support the advice service with casework and tribunal representation, and a service user who the clinic has been assisting. The visit lasted for hour and a half and there was an opportunity for thorough discussion of the benefits and challenges of providing social welfare legal services in GP practices as well as the difficulties members of the local community in Newham experience in accessing social welfare legal support. The Minister was interested in the research Professor Genn has been carrying out on the health benefits of legal advice funded by The Legal Education Foundation and they discussed the need to develop the evidence base and promote further robust research in the field. The Ministry of Justice will be setting up a range of pilot projects on novel ways of delivering legal advice and Professor Genn agreed to assist in engaging researchers and research funders in evaluating those projects.
Professor Genn said: ‘This was an excellent opportunity for the Minister to hear about the Faculty’s innovative health justice partnership and to see at first hand the help that the staff and students in our legal clinic have been providing for the community in Newham – an area of significant need which is seriously under-served for social welfare legal services.’
To find out more about the iLAC’s work, you can view and download the UCL Integrated Legal Advice Clinic 2018 impact report now.
