About Nucleus Legal Advice Centre
Nucleus LAC, established in 1974, is a voluntary organisation providing free legal advice and assistance and representation.
Nucleus LAC offers generalist advice and assistance, including representation. Our strengths lie in Debt, Housing, and Welfare Benefit work.
Nucleus LAC is an independent advice agency, a member of the AdviceUk. It employs 8 staff.
We have a number of active advice volunteers who supplement and compliment the service provided by paid staff, some volunteers take part in providing assistance to clients upto and including representation.
Service
delivery – currently we provide:
4 open door sessions,
2 telephone advice lines,
5 telephone housing advice sessions
Appointments at other times.
We have good shop front premises in a busy part of Earl’s Court and maintain strong links with a range of local organisations, particularly local refugee community groups, pan London umbrella groups and other local advice service providers. We regularly attend and input advice forums within the borough, voluntary advice agencies forum (KCAF).
The centre is based in a part of the Borough where there is a high level of need. The area has a diverse range of ethnic origin, income and age groups. Earl’s Court has traditionally become home for a variety of communities from across Britain and the world. There is real potential for Nucleus to continue develop new and dynamic services to meet these needs.
Our core funding is provided via a service level agreement with, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBK&C): we have received this funding for the last 3 decades.
All the service contracts currently held by Nucleus are designed to work along side each other to allow professional advisors to work together/alongside each other on interrelated cases and to provide each user with a comprehensive and sympathetic advice service across the social welfare field.
Nucleus aims to provide advice services to the local community. We try and access different forms of funding to:
Make sure we deliver relevant services in a holistic setting designed around the needs of the local community
To ensure we are not overly dependant on one funder (thereby compromising our independence)
We try to ensure the projects work together to provide a quality joined up service for users.
Developments
in the coming year include
Launching a new Capitalise project providing debt case work to Debt
Developing a new Legal aid contract in housing
Improving access to the Quick Advice service
The new service
We
are providing additional dent advice under the capitalise project.
The project is run by Toynbee hall and delivered by partner
organisations across London. We dleiver the service locally in the
tri borough area.
The projects aims to help people in debt via
:
Generalist debt advice at the open door quick advice sessions
Casework ( both legal help and non legal help cases) up to representation level
The caseworker will work in the current debt team which consists of a debt supervisor and 2 other advsiors.
Nucleus has 5 main projects:
1.
Generalist advice
Under a service level agreement Nucleus provide advice and assistance to the local community of a wide range of issues including housing, immigration, welfare benefits, debt and general matter (i.e. legal procedure, basic employment consumer etc).
This is funded by the projects and partnership Department at RBKC
Service
delivery is through
3 drop in across the week
Telephone advice line
Appointment/home visits
Members of the county court rota ( housing)
Debt,
benefits and housing are delivered under this contract up to a
Specialist quality level i.e. up to and including representation. We
have a procedural audit by the Legal Service Commission for
compliance against the Quality Mark requirements.
We have
delivered this service since 1974.
The service is monitored by the council against targets agreed with the council under a service level agreement.
2. Welfare benefits and Debt Legal help contracts in RBKC and HF
Some
of the teams work is delivered under a Legal help contract with the
Legal; Services Commission (LSC).
Under the contact we have to deliver a fixed number of eligible cases: this means we can only count advice given to people asking for help in particular benefits legal issues i.e. not benefit take up information etc and to people on a low income ( less than approx £145pw). Only work which falls within these parameters can be counted against the contract.
The
team takes part in two of the drop ins. Initial queries plus and
referrals from agencies such at the refugee centre develops into case
work.
We can take cases up to appeal stage where we represent clients in front of an adjudicator.
We can also claim disbursements for agreed items to help run the cases i.e. interpreters, counsels opinions etc. We claim (agreed cost) after the case is closed
3.
EDF energy project
This
is funded by EDF to help
1. provide seminars to educate local
people on saving energy and money
2.
Help people in utility debt access grants to start a fresh
The
project targets people in fuel poverty from across the tri bough area
( Westminster , RBKC and Hammersmith & Fulham) .
4.
Debt advice
This
is a project funded by Campden Charities we provide access to
information throughout the week
The project is targeted at
people the charity is helping by providing debt advice and
counselling. Nucleus has an advisor who has attained accreditation
which allows her to administer Debt Relief Orders.
It works
alongside the debt advice service already provided by Nucleus helping
people negotiate the debts and/or apply for debt relief
orders/bankruptcy.
We provide 4-8 half day seminars for
students and older people to help budgeting and general advise on
credit and finances during period of major life changes. We
disseminate basic information and encourage participants to share
experience, their insight and tips.
The service is limited to people living in Campden Charities catchment area.
5.
Advice Fund
This
a 1 year project to help deliver housing advice to prevent
homelessness.
We employ a solicitor who helps on the West
London Possession Rota.
The project targets tenants form housing
associations , protected tenants and statutory homeless people from
across the tri bough area ( Westminster , RBKC and Hammersmith &
Fulham) .
Last updated July 2012
Nucleus
Services
(Size indicates
Project size)
EDF
Housing (AF)
General (SLA)
P
Nucleus
Services
35
hour advice line
35
hour housing advice line
Home
visits
3
drop in sessions
Housing
outreach Court/
tribunal Representation
(ON THE TALK ABOUT THE TEAM GOING INTO THE
(WITH MERINDA EPSTEIN) 8 VOLUMES OF ‘CONVERSATIONS ABOUT MENTAL
090119 107R169 STATEMENTS ABOUT EXISTING CONDITIONS OF UTILITIES ADDITIONAL
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