OLA’s Projects
Turpin and Miller Projects:
Oxford Legal Assistance and Turpin & Miller run three projects together.
- The first is the "clinic scheme". This has been a feature of OLA from the beginning. There are two groups of student volunteers for the clinic, both providing legal assistance in immigration cases. Eight clinics are held every term; each group attends 4 clinics per term, each clinic lasting two hours. These clinics are held in the offices of Turpin & Miller, with solicitors on hand to help students whenever help is needed. At the moment there are six students in each group, with one reserve student who often fills in for others.
After receiving their training students engage with both new and existing clients of Turpin & Miller. The main responsibility of the students is to help people through the initial stages of applying for legal aid. This typically means that students need to determine the background case of the people applying for legal aid. Students deal with immigration cases. Therefore, determining the background case might include finding out when the interviewee first came to the UK and why. The student will also need to process documentation of the interviewee to make sure that they are eligible for legal aid.
- The second project with T&M is the "project volunteer" scheme. Four students go to the offices for a few hours every week and work closely with a solicitor providing legal assistance on focused projects. This gives the students the chance to work on a continuing project, as an alternative to the clinics where the students will probably not get to see the results of their legal assistance from week to week.
- The third project is the "court volunteer" scheme, through which five students are currently volunteers. T&M have some long hearings that they can predict months in advance, and during these long hearings they would usually have someone from the office there to take notes of the evidence and support the client. This scheme is managed by the family team at Turpin & Miller; the cases involved in this scheme are invariably about child abuse. The role of the student on this project is that of a note taker of what happens during these hearings.
Citizens Advice Bureau Project
OLA works directly with the Citizens Advice Bureau in Oxford allowing students to provide support to the organisation’s workers and volunteers.
Currently the scheme is designed to allow the students the opportunity to become trained in understanding the social policy aspect of the work that the CAB is involved in. This policy work is vital to the CAB both nationally and regionally. Recognising patterns and trends in aspects of society such as in housing, debt or immigration allows the CAB to predict future problems. It also means that importantly, through work such as campaigns, the CAB is able to make real changes to these problems benefiting large groups in society.
The students spend a large amount of time becoming fully trained in such areas before moving on to more direct involvement. As this is a new scheme there are soon to be further changes and development of the current involvement of the Oxford Legal Assistance.
