are CAB workers middle class?
- Thread starter rednblack
- Start date
Hoxtontwat
New Member
Ryazan said:
A persons background/cultural class identity and their occupation/current class position are two seperate but interalated issues.
Talking about which would make someone middle class is a dead end IMO
Yes and I stand by it having just called the person I’m referring to who has confirmed that their system still hasn’t been updated even after they sent 3 e-mails asking for this information to be updated.CaroleK said:'t turns out the Law has change and no-one told the CAB, apparently this is happening all the time.' - Hoxtontwat
'I didn't say that -Epicus did. I just failed to quote properly - Hoxtontwat'
OK
Sorry
This isn’t meant as a critic of the CAB I think it just reflex the fact that they are extremely busy as most other advice services have closed.
Sevenoaks is as middle class as it is possible to be, and apparently the happiest town in Britain because of the large number of people with time and money to do volunteer work. I'd lump Samaritans in with CAB. Middle class do gooders who get off on telling the rest of us how to think, feel and act.rednblack said:i think we're mostly agreed that CAB staff are not inherently middle class then (depending on their background) - good, that's what i thought.
rednblack said:i think we're mostly agreed that CAB staff are not inherently middle class then (depending on their background) - good, that's what i thought.
I dont
exosculate
a stagger with a beat
rednblack said:i think we're mostly agreed that CAB staff are not inherently middle class then (depending on their background) - good, that's what i thought.
The volunteers usually are though!
exosculate said:
Who the hell else would volunteer to work for free?
rednblack said:
You won't be seeing him no more.
ernestolynch said:You won't be seeing him no more.
Why's that?
rednblack said:the call of the dalai llama
Tell me more.
past caring
The Cathars were right
rednblack said:the call of the dalai llama
Bollocks you cunt....
Just got back from 3 weeks in Thailand and NZ....and still sleep deprived.
More when I've recovered a bit.
Well in your “profession” you main find that the case, but I can think of many working class people that do voluntary work, not least Branch officers in most unions.ernestolynch said:Who the hell else would volunteer to work for free?
But I think most professionals hold the same view as you do
avu9lives
famous five member
Epicurus/ said:Yes and I stand by it having just called the person I’m referring to who has confirmed that their system still hasn’t been updated even after they sent 3 e-mails asking for this information to be updated.
This isn’t meant as a critic of the CAB I think it just reflex the fact that they are extremely busy as most other advice services have closed.
[/Exactly! 'communication breakdown'/]
Every other agencies issue, send them to CAB.
I worked as a vonunteerfor the 'CAB'
Do you know what I experienced?
True self awareness.
Being indepedant and impartial is a challenge for a lot of people but, you learn through the intense training all advisors go through for CAB work.
It is true dedication on behalf of all the advisors, ' try keeping up with all the different areas of law that change FREQUENTLY' the advice most recently to be applied!
Even to the point of challenging where appropriate! any form of discrimination.
Ok yes, we are, and all have our own personality and ideals, but this is a position (advising) where you can not afford to make mistakes.
The people you are advising have real issues and criss's.
In my personal experience the advisors I worked with came from all walks of life, from top, middle, bottom and even in between, ages, sexes, from all walks.
But we had one thing in common, the quality of advice we gave.
It's an alternative army of dedicated, motivated individuals from many diverse
to empower those who can and aid those who ask...
past caring
The Cathars were right
treelover said:
Simply not the case.*
There are real problems with legal aid funding, but the above is far too simplistic.
As someone who has worked as an advisor for the last eight years, I'd say the real problems set in at the time when I was just starting out - with the setting up of the Community Legal Service. This was basically the move by Derry Irving and the Lord Chancellor's Dept. to shift Legal Aid away from solicitors and into community advice centres/CABx, including Law Centres. The notion being that, as many of those centres were already providing expert/specialist advice in areas such as welfare benefits, housing, debt and immigration, a local network of such organisations might be better placed to respond to the needs of the local community. They would do this through "bidding" for "franchises" in particular areas of work and, if succesful, would be rewarded with a contract to provide specialist advice in a particular field. In return, the contract would require those organisations to bill or time record for a certain number of hours of "eligible" work.
Solicitors' groups were up in arms - basically arguing that there were insufficient CABx etc with the expertese to do the work/take up the contracts. Advice centres, unfortunately (on reflection), took the opposite view. The sector was always poorly funded and, as much of that funding was provided by the local authority, often insecurely funded too. The opportunity to increase or secure funding was too good to pass up (although it has to be said that, in many cases, the advice sector did and still does have the requisite expertese).
However, what was only apparent to a few at the time has now become increasingly obvious to many working at the rock face in the advice sector - the Community Legal Service was an entirely political move, one with the long-term aim of reducing the legal aid budget.
Those with contracts/franchises are (and were) supposed to have regular audits - to check on both the quality of work and on the legitimacy of the work being charged for. When the CLS kicked off, I was working for an organisation that was part of the pilot scheme with one franchise in debt/money advice. It bid for another three - and got them all, this despite the fact that it hadn't been audited. This kind of thing was repeated across the sector and across the country - and was the Legal Aid Board's direct response to solicitors' concerns. Franchises were basically dished out like smarties and for the first few years, no serious audits were undertaken; at least not ones which resulted in franchises being lost. The scheme couldn't be seen to fail.
In retrospect, my view is the advice sector was used as scab labour. I'm not defending solicitors particularly, but I am saying that the Lord Chancellor's Dept always intended to introduce the kind of cuts and clawbacks we're seeing now - and it knew that the advice sector would be capable of putting up much weaker resistance than solicitors were.
Franchising, in my view, has been a fucking disaster for the advice sector. When I started, there was a real belief that quality, free advice should be available to everyone, regardless of background or means. The effect of franchising has been and will increasingly be to restrict the availability of advice;
- we can only take cases which qualify financially. This means that someone on a low income won't get advice, simply because their means aren't quite low enough. Last week, for instance, I had to refuse a DLA appeal for a severely disabled woman who has been refused benefit - not because of her level of income but because she owns her home. She's got only £75 a week to live on, but the supposition is she should sell her home.
The week before, I had to refuse a woman who's just gone back to work after three years off with depression. In that time she was claiming IS - she's now just been hit for a £15k overpayment of benefit which I think, on the merits of the case itself, is appealable. Her current earnings (about £180 a week) prevent me taking the case.
- the majority of local authorities take the view we no longer have to be funded even to the poor degree we once were. Money from Legal Aid funding means they can cut our budgets. This means that those client with cases which have legal merit but with means just above those which qualify for Legal Aid are even less likely to get quality advice.
- local authorities themselves encourage this process - in most instances, they take the view that only those centres which have franchises/Legal Aid contracts are deserving of their funding, because those contracts in themselves are proof of "quality" advice. No franchise very often equates to no council funding, either and, therefore, closure.
I could go on, but I've written about as much as I can stand to...
(* just realised that I've not really addressed the initial point. Because Law Centres, by and large, took the view that they would run cases on their merits and not, primarily, because of the financial status of their clients, very few of them actually had Legal Aid funding. Most were funded by their local authority. Historically, that funding was usually greater and more secure than that given to advice centres. This - and the fact that many saw themselves as a "cut above" CABx - did mean that they were often slow off the mark when it came to bidding for franchises under the CLS. Many did catch up - after some initial reticence. Others closed, their reluctance to bid for franchises having a particularly heavy impact when combined with my third bullet point, above.
But it simply isn't the case that Legal Aid funding was taken from them and handed to us. They were just as much at liberty to bid for contracts as we were. Many did - and survived.)
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