Getting Community Care advice
The Law Centre provides specialist services in Community Care and Human Rights law. Community Care is a complex area of law. However, at heart it is about how local authorities and other statutory agencies meet the needs of people who are disabled or ill, older people and children in need. We help people with physical disabilities and illnesses, mental health problems and learning difficulties.
The Community Care team acts on behalf of both carers and service users. We advise on the Community Care assessment process and subsequent service provision and last year we helped several hundred people obtain assessments, challenge assessments or take steps to ensure that appropriate services or facilities were provided. We also helped people with hospital discharge and post discharge care arrangements and continuing health care needs, both at home and in residential accommodation.
The Human Rights Act is a wide ranging and often misunderstood area of law. We seek to apply the Act in a practical manner, with a view to securing real improvements in people’s day to day lives. Human Rights are about how public bodies protect our basic freedoms, including the right to be safe and protected from harm, the right to be treated fairly and with dignity and the right to autonomy and control over your own life and interactions with society.
The Community Care team also has a particular strength in taking Disability Discrimination cases against service providers and public authorities. To date we have taken over a hundred cases, often securing compensation payments for injury to feelings and reasonable adjustments that have substantially improved access for disabled people.
We offer a free telephone advice session on Community Care and Human Rights issues between 10.00 am and 1.00 pm on Tuesdays and between 1.00 pm and 5.00 pm on Thursdays. The telephone number for both advice sessions is 024 7625 3167. This telephone service is staffed by one of the solicitors from the Community Care Team. We are happy to give advice over the telephone or arrange appointments to take on more complex cases. We are only able to take on community care cases for Coventry residents, although due to a grant from the EHRC we can take on cases involving discrimination or Human Rights from anyone living in Warwickshire.
We specialise in advocacy and representation and, where necessary, we can take judicial review and other court proceedings. If you think that you will need an appointment or just want to discuss a problem call the advice line. If you need an interpreter please let us know so that we can arrange for one to be present at any interview. The Law Centre will also be writing a range of leaflets on common Community Care law issues. These will be available for download from the website in the near future.
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7622 3053