Govan Law Centre (GLC) have launched a crowdfund to provide legal services for women who are homeless. Please click here to support in anyway you can.
GLC are aiming to raise £5,000 to get the project started and set themselves an ambitious stretch target of £20k, to provide a more holistic, integrated service. GLC promise to tackle the gender inequality at the heart of the homeless system.
Please see article in the Evening Times
The project will go into women’s support organisations and provide legal services, advice and assistance and money and welfare right services. They will defend evictions and repossessions, help women make homelessness applications and support them through the homelessness process
GLC have become concerned that some of their homeless women clients can spend years in expensive temporary accommodation, which leaves them in limbo, puts their life on hold and can cause real financial hardship for them and their children.
Please see our article in The Herald
GLC have been providing legal services for rough sleepers in day care centres. These services have proven to be very successful. However – unlike all GLC other services – they are very male dominated services. It has proved harder to provide these services to some of our most vulnerable women.
Lorna Walker, senior solicitor and GLC partner said: “Women’s experience of homelessness is different to men. They spend longer in temporary accommodation, they are more like to be looking after children, and they tend to stay in abusive or violent relationships to avoid homelessness. Rough sleeping can be particularly dangerous for women. Women’s homelessness tends to be more hidden. At the sharp end of this women can be exploited. It’s more difficult for them to access legal services. Many women facing these issues will not approach a solicitor’s office. We have learned we need to take our services out to them.”
Women need support to care for their children, they need protected from eviction and repossession, they need to leave abusive partners and they need financial assistance. Ultimately they want to find a decent safe home. And with the right funding we can start to help them do this”
Mike Dailly, solicitor advocate and GLC principal solicitor said: “Providing specific legal services for women who are homeless is something we have wanted to do for many years. If we raise £5k we can make a great start and run rights hubs for women, which we can evaluate and hopefully build on. If we can raise £20K we can make a real impact on the lives of homeless women. We need more test cases, raise more court action and more judicial reviews, to challenge some of the deep seated gender inequalities in our homeless system. Please support our crowd funding for women who are homeless in anyway you can.”
Govan Law Centre is one of the largest campaigning law centres in the UK. It specialises in housing and homelessness law. GLC has pioneered Rights Hubs – taking legal services out to rough sleepers and other very vulnerable people who often are unable to access legal or public services.
GLC provide welfare rights, money advice and vulnerable person caseworkers. As part of an holistic service which aims to improve lives.
Crowdfunder page address: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/women-rights-homelessness-project
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/315423912?utm_source=email&utm_medium=vimeo-cliptranscode-201504&utm_campaign=29220&utm_term=1191414
