CASCAIDr are walking 10K for Access to Justice TODAY!
We stage only one fundraising event per year, and today is it - our Access to Justice Walk...
Eighteen team members are walking for us today, in what is predicted to be a real scorcher - as part of the London Legal Support Trust’s annual campaign.?
Please support us by donating, click?here ?to do so.?
Any amount is great, but it’s even better if you can tick the Gift Aid button as a UK taxpayer – because 25% extra is then generated, from HMRC.??
Please look at our materials for our theme this year: ‘Plugging Away at the Rights Gap’?
A prediction from Belinda Schwehr, our CEO, some years ago, has now come true: that for many people with disabilities and conditions making them reliant on council funded care, what they get in their care plans, now, is a complete lottery.?
Back then, Belinda said “There’ll be no care left to rely on, given the purposeful dismantling of the social care safety net, through continued underfunding, whilst billions have been squandered on other issues.”?
But what couldn’t have been foreseen, is how the workforce consequences of both Brexit and Covid would come to affect the well-off, along with anyone else who’s struggling financially, if and when care is needed.?
Now – 3 years later - the situation is that there will be no skilled care left, soon, to be bought,?even privately, unless the powerful – both in politics and the commercial care provider sector – get together to make?working?in care both financially worth doing, and desirable.?
That’s something no one wants to hear, if they’re assuming it’ll just be a question of spending money, if the worst happens to them or their loved ones.??
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But who’re?you?going to call, should the situation continue to deteriorate??
Nobody can solve the funding problem, other than politically, now.?
But we, at CASCAIDr, can still try to ensure that people’s legal rights are not just ignored.?
Rights depend on remedies, if accountability is to mean anything in local authorities, these days. The system is melting down and law has become irrelevant.?
The latest statistics on the legal aid ‘advice desert’, with regard to access to community care lawyers, nationwide, suggest that in the last 10 years, cases initiated by law firms under the first level of legal aid funding for people, with savings under ￡8K (Legal Help) have decreased by 77%. Most contracted legal firms refuse to take this work on at all, as it tends to be complex and can’t be done profitably. It is not taught at university level; there is a dearth of specialists to supervise it, and it is emotionally taxing work, given the high level of distress presented by clients/informal carers.?
Due to central government’s approach to adult social services and social care, there are documented gaps in people receiving any/adequate care, too - for example 2.6 million people in England contending with (unlawfully) unmet social care needs, despite eligibility, and 500,000 people still awaiting a statutory needs assessment that is their virtual legal entitlement.?
Our website can be found at www.CASCAIDr.org.uk – in case someone you know, ever needs help from our caseworkers.?
On a wider note, the London Legal Support Trust puts on this Walk, annually, because many law centres and CABx have become barely viable, as funding cuts have gathered pace. The money raised by the Walk, keeps about 100 specialist advice centres in London, open and functioning. We are one of them, thus far.?
Please think about what will become of the sector, in all its different forms, if Care Act legal rights come to mean nothing, because there's nobody left who knows how, or cares to try, to enforce them??
Please donate as much as you can?here ?- many thanks, in advance, from the 18 members of the team.?
We would just flag up that the donation button company assumes you’d like to ‘enhance your donation’ to cover their costs for the wider good, and if you don’t want to do that, you have to click on ‘Other’ in the drop down amount box, and choose ￡0.?