CARA

History

Introduction
CARA was set up in July 2003 to provide free legal advice and representation to people facing disadvantage in the UK and Africa. Our charity has changed significantly over the years since then to ensure that it remains best able to meet the needs of clients.

It now concentrates on its role as a specialist provider of advice, representation and advocacy. The increasing complexity of law and increasing inequality in our society since the 1970s has meant that access to legal remedies has remained as relevant today as it was at the start. Recent research shows a strong link between economic and social regeneration, health inequalities, and the pattern of experience of social, economic, cultural and legal problems. Giving individuals and communities the capacity and power to take action to defend their rights is the sign of an inclusive society. CARA seeks to empower local people by promoting social, economic, cultural and legal solutions to many of the problems they face.

We currently work in the following areas of law: Community Care, discrimination, housing, immigration, employment, welfare benefits, mental health, education and public law and human rights. We do not act for landlords, companies or employers. We regularly seek to review the work that we do to ensure that our service remains relevant.

CARA believes that it is important to challenge the way that law affects the most disadvantaged and vulnerable members of our community. We therefore seek to use our knowledge, experience and skills in a variety of ways to meet our core objective of combating social exclusion. We plan to start taking on test cases that may have an impact well beyond the actual case fought, we shall produce self help leaflets to ensure that individuals are able to make informed decisions and we shall lobby and campaign for changes to the law where we think that current or proposed changes are not just. We plan to increase our workload to around 1000 cases each year and to secure tens of millions of pounds for clients in arrears of benefits, additions to income, and compensation over the years. Our work also includes advice and representation which cannot be given a monetary value, such as preventing evictions, advising about immigration and asylum matters and combating discrimination.

CARA is an independent charity working in the United Kingdom and Africa. We have a management committee of Trustees and we maintain a membership which links us with the community we serve and reflects the diversity within our communities. Our trustees have decided to register the society as a company limited by guarantee at the Company House in the current year. We work closely and are a part of the Office of Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC), AdviceUK, Money Advice Trust, Hackney Council for Voluntary Sector (HCVS), Hackney Voluntary Action (HVA), Hackney Homes, City and Hackney NHS PCT, and the Hackney African Forum. This is a network of information, advice and specialist advisors in Hackney and across the UK who are committed to independent free advice. CARA has been independently inspected to ensure that both the running of CARA and its advice delivery is of a consistently high standard. We are seeking to get the Legal Services Commission 'Quality Mark' at the specialist level, as this shall be our client's guarantee of quality assured services.

We are grateful for the support received from our main funders Awards for All, Hackney Councils, Hackney PCT, Hackney Business Link and for the support made by our members through memberships and donations. We also wish to acknowledge funding we are waiting from the Big Lottery. A thank you is also owed to many other donors to CARA. If you are interested in sponsoring CARA please e-mail us at info@cara-online.org

Why CARA?
Getting legal advice should not be difficult. There are plenty of private legal advisers firms in the UK. There are also several advice agencies that can offer general advice on lots of issues and some more specialist advice. However, for many people these choices are not real. Legal advisers can be expensive and getting specialist advice at more general advice agencies is not always easy.

CARA exist to bridge this gap. We have the skills and experience that all Legal advisers hold, combined with a commitment to challenging poverty and supporting communities that the not for profit sector specialises in. We provide a comprehensive legal service in areas of social welfare law that private Legal advisers seldom address and use that knowledge and experience to make the law accessible. We also seek to influence policy making through taking test cases and lobbying. CARA seek to develop innovative ways of making law and justice accessible.

Our clients are unlikely to be able to pay for advice and representation. Legal Services Commission (CLS) funding - what used to be called Legal Aid - that we are planning to apply for would likely cover representation at most tribunals that we would be able to represent at many hearings, especially where many private Legal advisers and the Law Society do not feel that the payments they receive under CLS funding properly reflect the cost of providing the service and the client is unable to find another representative. Accordingly our client group can find it both difficult and expensive to access the law.

With the support of CLS funding, grants from the UK's City Councils that we are expecting to receive, and other fundraising activities, CARA will be able to provide specialist legal advice and representation without depending upon the individual's ability to pay. Clients can come to us knowing that they are receiving a quality assured service without having to worry about how they will pay.

CARA is central to the notion of a Community Legal Service. From early origins in urban centres in the 2003, the number of CARA's members have expanded to over 1000. The Government's commitment to a Community Legal Service is now leading to a new expansion of CARA.

Publicly provided free legal advice should be available to everyone, not just to those with financial resources or to those few who can get publicly funded legal advice because of their income. There are many areas of law where public funding is simply not available and this means that even in areas where fundamental rights are in dispute there is no access to the legal system. CARA, however, are about more than providing accessible legal advice to people who cannot afford to pay. The aim of our work is to use the law imaginatively to combat inequality, discrimination and the causes and effects of poverty, and to ensure that any attempt to use the law to perpetuate or foster these is challenged.

Main Activities
1. HIV/AIDS: prevention, care and support for those affected by HIV/AIDS by doing:
* Outreach: We distribute free condoms and sexual health information about HIV/AIDS and other STIs;
* Drop-in service: Providing advice on sexual health issues and signposting to the relevant public services;
* Campaigns: Working with the communities to reduce the incidence of HIV, STIs and teenage pregnancy;
* Support Group/Discussion: prevention, care and support for those affected by HIV/AIDS and their family.
2. Health: striving to reduce childhood death and illness;
3. Education: providing quality basic education for all, especially girls;
4. Water and sanitation: provision of clean water and adequate sanitation;
5. Protection: protection for people affected by conflict, natural disaster and exploitation;
6. Translation & Interpretation Services in French, Portuguese, Somali, Kinyarwanda, Lingala & English;
7. Legal: helping the poor to know, understand and achieve their rights;

We rely on our members and the generosity of the public in securing donations and legacies so that we can continue the work we provide.

Type of organisation

Voluntary/Community sector

Area Covered

International