Guest Article by Community Law & Mediation Director Rose Wall – Name change, new website and new search facilities for Casebase

Rose Wall is the Director of Community Law and Mediation.

For over 39 years, Northside Community Law Centre has been a pioneering organisation in the provision of community based legal services.
Our work includes free legal, mediation and information services, as well as advocacy and support for law reform campaigns at national level.

Since we were established as a community law centre in Coolock in 1975, our range of services and centres has expanded to include a free mediation service, Mediation Northside, and a second community law centre in Limerick.

To more accurately reflect the expanded range of services that we offer, our members have voted to adopt a new name for the organisation: Community Law & Mediation. We believe this better represents the scale and scope of our work.

Community Law & Mediation will continue to provide the same services, including two community law centres in Dublin's Northside and Limerick, and a range of national services concentrating on mediation, law reform, community education, and resources such as the Irish Community Development Law Journal and the Social Welfare decision database, Casebase.

Community Law & Mediation has also developed a new website which gives more information on the organisation and the services we provide.  As part of the new website, we have developed the search functions of Casebase, which we hope will make it more accessible and easier to use. 

You can now search the database by payment type, year and/or by keyword.  For instance if an NGO is thinking of challenging a decision regarding an overpayment, a search can be conducted under the keyword "overpayment" which will gather all the cases relating to overpayments on the database. This can be further narrowed by year and/or by payment type e.g. Jobseekers Allowance. 

We would like to expand Casebase by inviting CIS’s, MABS or other organisations working in the area of social welfare law to contribute cases which we can publish on the database.

If an organisation wishes to contribute a case, they should firstly contact Moya de Paor, Solicitor in Social Welfare Law at CLM Northside to confirm whether the case in question is suitable for Casebase.  The organisation will then need to obtain the client’s consent to release the file and publish the anonymised report and send a copy of the full file to Moya de Paor who will make contact again once the report is finalised.  The organisation does not have to do any other work bar the above and will be acknowledged in the report as taking the case.

By having a case published on Casebase, the organisation retains a record of the key elements of the case such as the evidence and arguments relied upon, the Appeals Officer’s decision and rationale which can be used again in a similar case.  At a national level, the organisation will also be assisting in furthering the aims of Casebase in terms of promoting greater transparency and consistency within the Social Welfare Appeals process.

If you would like to contribute to Casebase, please contact Moya de Paor at 01 8477804.

If you would like further information about our work, please sign up to the Community Law & Mediation mailing list at http://communitylawandmediation.hc1.webtrade.ie/about-us/mailing-list.41.html or visit our new website: www.communitylawandmediation.ie

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