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Applications for this opportunity are open.
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.
Eligibility:
Final year LLB students, LLM students, and mature students. 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 at least 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.
In addition, all students will receive the CAJ Mandatory Volunteer training, which covers data protection and confidentiality, working with vulnerable clients, professional conduct and regulation, self-care, and our expectations of CAJ volunteers.
Pro Bono Skills Development Framework:
The Centre for Access to Justice now offers all students engaged in extracuricular pro bono the opportunity to participate in the Pro Bono Skills Development Framework. This framework allows you to reflect on the skills gained during your placement, aligned with the Aurora Competence Framework. Completing it earns you a Certificate of Commitment to Pro Bono, acknowledging your dedication and skill development. Your participation will help you document and showcase the valuable competencies you've developed, however, please note that participation in the PBSDF scheme is entirely voluntary and will not affect your placement in any way.
DBS Checks:
This opportunity requires Enhanced DBS checks, to be processed through the UCL Student Enquiries Centre. Enhanced DBS checks take a considerable amount of time to be processed, so please ensure that you obtain all required documents as soon as you are selected in order to begin your placement as soon as possible. For more information on the DBS process, please see our CAJ DBS Check guidance.
How to apply:
Applications for this opportunity are open.
The deadline is 23 October at 11:59PM. Please apply via this link.
When applying, please make sure you have completed the CAJ Equality and Diversity Monitoring Questionnaire. You only need to complete this once per academic year.
If you have any questions about this opportunity, please contact Annika Melwani at annika.melwani@ucl.ac.uk.