I'm Atoa, and this is The Insider's Guide to Community law.
So we’re here to help by giving free, confidential, one on one legal help to people who don't have much money or are in vulnerable situations. Often our role is simply to listen to people and offer information or initial advice about what it is that's happening to them, what might happen, and their options. So, a vulnerable situation could be where a couple or parents break up because the father has been violent towards the mother and there are children involved that have seen it.
So in those situations, we will help the mother go to court and obtain orders to ensure that she doesn't have contact any more with the, with the father, and that the children are safe. We can also help with situations where a mother wants to know if the person they were in a relationship with is actually the father.
So that's called paternity cases. And we can apply to court to get, paternity tests done. We can also help when families break up and they're not sure what's going to happen with the house. The single most important thing is breaking down those barriers, I think, for our law centres in accessing justice. Just psychological barriers. They are too scared to go and see a lawyer,
it's intimidating to see a lawyer, they can't speak English, or they're not the same culture as that lawyer. The services are free for everybody. We focus on helping people with low incomes. However, if you are experiencing family violence or abuse, we will help regardless. So if you don't speak English, we actually have staff, at some of our offices that can speak other languages besides English.
So at Māngere Law Centre, where I'm from, we have staff that speak Tongan and Samoan. We also have interpreting services available. And we also welcome whānau and support people to attend. When you book an appointment with us, our staff will triage that and decide whether you need to see one of our lawyers or our community advocates.
When we talk to you, we’ll let you tell us what your situation is, and then we will work with you to find the next best steps to take. You can also bring your children in. That's not a problem at all. Because we do have areas where they can wait while we're talking to you. A community advocate, they have a wide range of knowledge into the services that are out there in the community that can help our clients with their non-legal issues.
And usually when clients come in, 75% of it can be non-legal issues and 25% can be the actual family law issue. So they will help you with accessing places like WINZ or Kāinga Ora or, even helping with getting food parcels. We always make sure that your information that you give us is all confidential. But we also do conflict checks, which is where before we meet with you, we will make sure that we haven't given or spoken to somebody else about your matter.
We are always happy for you to come in. However, it always helps to call first or email to book an appointment to see a lawyer so that they're available. You can actually Google the words community law and your town, and it will come up with the closest law centre to you. If you're watching this video. Just know that we will take the time to listen to you.
And we really want to help you and your whanau to get to a better place.
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Description
Community Law provide free, confidential, one to one legal advice to people who need it, all across Aotearoa New Zealand.
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