This summer Warwick LinC is offering six part-time paid internship opportunities:

• Strategic Social Justice Internship - Central England Law Centre x 1 internship
• Immigration and Asylum Internship- Central England Law Centre x 2 internships
• Legal Action Group Internship- Legal Action Group x 2 internships
• Legal Information, Research and Evaluation Internship - Law for Life: The Foundation for Public Legal Education x 1 internship

All current and past volunteers with Warwick LinC programmes (Strategic Social Justice Clinic, Immigration and Asylum Clinic, School Exclusions Project, etc) and undergraduate students who have completed the Public Legal Education Module are eligible to apply. You must be based in the UK whilst working as an intern on these projects. For more information on each internship and details of how to apply, see here.

Warwick Law in the Community and Law for Life: The Foundation of Public Legal Education are excited to announce an internship opportunity for past LinC volunteers. Law for Life are looking for two individuals to help prepare a public legal education programme on housing rights aimed at assisting people with disabilities understand their legal rights regarding housing.

 Recruitment is now open for students wishing to work with Warwick Law in the Community’s Strategic Social Justice and Immigration Asylum clinics run with our partner organisation the Central England Law Centre.

As part of a collaboration with Warwick LinC and the Central England Law Centre Warwick Law students presented research and developed tools for law centre staff to use to support people facing delays in social housing allocation when they face a change of circumstances.

Warwick Law in the Community is recruiting for students to take part in the next Strategic Social Justice Clinic project in Term 3.

Led by Dr Maggie O'Brien (University of Warwick) and Carla Clarke (Solicitor with the Central England Law Centre) the SSJC is one of two clinics run by Warwick LinC in partnership with the Central England Law Centre (CELC). It aims to use public law and other rights-based strategies to address systemic disadvantage and achieve effective change. Working in small groups student volunteers receive supervision, guidance and mentorship from the clinic leads. During the course of the clinic students will put legal learning into practice, find creative ways of using the law and develop leadership, communication and organisational skills in the social justice sector.

The focus of the project for Term 3 will be as follows:

All decisions made by public bodies must follow the principles of public law. Where they do not, they can be challenged through a process called judicial review. Before starting a judicial review claim in the courts, an individual should comply with the pre-action protocol process. This is aimed at trying to resolve the dispute without the need to resort to the courts. It involves sending a pre-action letter to the public body setting out the basic facts of the case, the alleged unlawful decision and the grounds of challenge with a specific time frame for a response. In straightforward cases, where the unlawfulness is clear, the pre-action process can often result in the public body amending their decision straightaway.

We will be looking at the judicial review and pre-action protocol process and drafting a template pre-action letter that can be used by staff at Central England Law Centre staff. The template letter is likely to concern delays by the Department of Work and Pensions in making decisions on social security claims

Students will be expected to commit 3 - 5 hours per week during term time and attend regular, weekly meetings usually on a Wednesday around midday.

Key Dates

• An online meeting via Teams will be held on Thursday 26th January at 11am. This will be recorded and students can view it after the meeting
• Students should submit their CV and a Cover Letter of no more than 300 words via email to WarwickLinC@warwick.ac.uk by midday 6th February
• Interviews for shortlisted applicants will take place on 22nd February

All Warwick Law Students can apply as well as PPL students.

For further information please contact WarwickLinC@warwick.ac.uk

Warwick Law in the Community, working in partnership with Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, have published: The Right to Community Equivalent Healthcare in Immigration Removal Centres: A Public Law Analysis of Systemic Issues in the Inspection Regime.

Anyone who is detained by the state is entitled to receive health care which is equivalent in quality to that enjoyed in the wider community. For many years there has been a persistent and consistent concern about the quality of healthcare in immigration removal centres (IRCs), but the findings of statutory inspections have tended to find provision to be satisfactory.

This report asks whether there are systemic elements of the inspection scheme which inhibit its ability to apply the community equivalence principle. Drawing on work undertaken by LinC's Strategic Public Law Clinic between January 2020 and November 2021, it makes comparisons between the scheme used by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to quality assess community healthcare provision and that adopted to respond to the overlapping responsibilities of the CQC and His Majesty Inspectorate of Prisons for inspecting healthcare in IRCs.

Its recommendations call for fundamental reform not only to operational processes for gathering and analysing evidence, but also to the underpinning regulations which currently prevent the CQC from applying a ‘community equivalent’ approach.

Warwick Law in the Community (LinC) is pleased to collaborate with the Central England Law Centre (CELC) to offer students exciting volunteering opportunities with the Strategic Social Justice Clinic (SSJC) as well as the Immigration and Asylum Clinic (I&A) this academic year.

Students are welcome to join our MS Teams information session on Monday 3 October 2022 between 2-3pm to learn more about LinC and this year’s opportunities with the team at CELC. The link to join this session will be sent to all Law students via email.

If you have any questions about the opportunities, please email WarwickLinC@warwick.ac.uk

Read more about the opportunities and how to apply here.

Congratulations to Brianna Underwood, Alex Reay, Alex Iseghohi Okoibhole, Lily Bowater and Eve Smith, our summer 2021 interns.

Brianna, Alex and Alex will be working with Central England Law Centre teams on some exciting projects dealing with Public Law and Human Rights issues, Rights in Peril in the community and the setting up and running of 'Litigants in Person' evaluation study. Lily and Eve will be working with the LinC Team and Warwickshire County Council Education Entitlement Team to look at developing a School Exclusions pilot project where LinC students and the CC will look to develop support for children and families in this area. The projects will take place over June and July and we very much look forward to updating you on what's been achieved later in the Summer.

Our project partners were impressed by the incredibly high standard of applications this year. Thanks to everyone who took part.