Build your legal muscle

Pamela Alexander

Supporting People project worker, Southwark Reach (part of Thamesreach)

Course Working with substance use (drugs and alcohol)
Provider KFx Learning of Substance
When taken April 2010
Duration Two days
Cost ‘Commercially confidential’

This course focused on managing drug behaviour onsite (in a hostel for example), storing drugs, finding and disposing of drugs, handling paraphernalia and intoxication, and criminal and civil law issues.

The example given on the course that Pamela Alexander found most useful was that of a worker looking after a client’s drugs because the client had a history of overdosing/suicide.

‘The legal issue,’ she says, ‘was what would happen if the client came in and he was in a bad state and he wanted all his drugs back to overdose and kill himself?’ She says she learned ‘it wasn’t legal for the worker to keep the drugs, it’s not legal for us to hold onto a client’s drugs. Whether they’re prescription drugs or otherwise we could be held for possession’.

‘Prior to the training I had no idea whether it was legal or not; we thought the worker was trying to help the client but it turned out that the worker would have been supplying the client. It’s only legal for someone like a chemist or GP to administer those drugs,’ Ms Alexander explains, adding that this issue provoked a great deal of discussion on the course.

The trainer also showed them how to identify drugs. ‘He showed us all the paraphernalia used such as what a 10lb bag of heroin or crack would look like.’ She qualifies that ‘he didn’t have the actual drugs on him’. ‘He was very thorough and he’s given us a very good booklet to read,’ she adds.

Bernadette McPherson

Debt recovery team leader, Glasgow Housing Association

Course Specialist paralegal qualification in debt recovery
Provider Central law training with Strathclyde University
When taken October 2009
Duration Seven weekly, two-hour sessions
Cost £1,495 plus VAT

Bernadette McPherson is responsible for collecting rent arrears from former tenants. Before joining GHA in October 2008, she had worked in private sector debt recovery for 20 years so already had some experience. This course focused on debt recovery from the Scottish legal perspective.

She says: ‘Being from a more commercial background (recovery of business to business debts), the course was very useful in helping me understand the different types of enforcement action once decree has been granted by the courts.’

It was also useful for her to learn about the debt arrangement scheme, introduced to Scotland in 2004, which allows individuals with multiple debts to repay them without threat of legal action or bankruptcy.

‘If you’re going through court action and you find that someone is on low income with low assets, you commence a debt arrangement scheme and agree to pay reduced affordable amounts towards the debt. What we’re looking at is the best solution all round,’ she says.

‘The debt arrangement scheme was the most important part for me because it is relatively new and not something widely known in debt recovery circles. It was all very relevant to the job, looking at contracts and terms and conditions of contracts.’

Cathy Dodson

Housing options team leader, West Berkshire Council

Course Temporary accommodation and the law
Provider Chartered Institute of Housing
When taken April 2009
Duration One day
Cost £265+VAT non-member, £225+VAT CIH member

Cathy Dodson oversees the management of temporary accommodation and Gypsy and Traveller sites as well as the housing register in West
Berkshire.

She took the course because temporary accommodation has just come under her remit. She learned ‘loads’ in that one day,
she says.

‘It gave an overview of duty and how you can discharge your homelessness duty for people in temporary accommodation,’ she says.

She appreciated learning the limits of the law, ‘and where you can legally be challenged for suitability [of the accommodation you offer someone]. The client can challenge you in a judicial review if [they think that you are offering something unsuitable].

‘We’ve got lots of rural locations in West Berkshire so sometimes it’s not possible to place someone exactly where they want to be. Someone might have their children in school in a rural village and we might only have temporary accommodation available in a town centre.

‘They might think it’s unreasonable to be expected to move but we’d need to see if there was availability and be comfortable in our decision, and [the course] has certainly made me more comfortable as to where I am and the law, so I’m very empowered. Before I would have been a little bit woolly.’

Sarah Phelps

Neighbourhood officer, South Anglia Housing/Circle Anglia

Course Anti-social behaviour training
Provider Staple Inn Chambers
When taken July 2009
Duration One day
Cost Unavailable (part of ongoing internal programme)

The course forms part of Circle Anglia’s ongoing overall learning and development programme for employees, run at various locations. Sarah Phelps decided to do the ASB course ‘because I deal with it a lot’.

‘The training helped me look at how we can use injunctions and [what happens] if they are breached,’ she explains. ‘[The trainer] went through all the different kinds of anti-social behaviour. Some people don’t consider noise nuisance as anti-social behaviour [and put up with it] and people don’t really know that they’re causing a nuisance and it’s about bringing their attention to it.

‘I came into [this job] as a neighbourhood assistant and got this after a year so I knew the basic things like monitoring but didn’t know about injunctions and the processes involved. The training was really helpful and the trainer was very thorough.’

Ms Phelps attends a monthly ASB forum with the council, police and other local housing associations which examines ASB cases in the area. This course, she says, has boosted her performance at these events.

Val Schneider

Tenant board member, Nottingham City Homes

Course The impact of the single equality act on housing
Provider Chartered Institute of Housing
When taken March 2009
Duration One day
Cost £261 +VAT for CIH members, £293+VAT non-members

Val Schneider found herself on the course after seeing it advertised in Inside Housing and asking her arm’s-length management organisation employer if she could attend. ‘It was drawing together all the strands of equality. We had people there from [since merged older peoples’ charities] Help the Aged and Age Concern, and [LGBT organisation] Stonewall,’ she says.

Ms Schneider says it helped her ‘see the similarity between various groups’ that were discriminated against and how they shared a common goal. ‘If you imagine a cube, each face is a different aspect of the discrimination, whether it be lesbian, gay or bisexual or gender or age. Without one, it wouldn’t be the cube and the cube is equality for everybody.’

Ms Schneider is also taking part in the CIH Level 4 Award in Governance - as part of the institute’s ongoing Active Learning for Residents programme. The governance and management module examines the legal framework for the governance of organisations. The course is 48 hours over two years, the first part of which she took as a one-day course in February 2009.

This, she says, was especially helpful when covering the law regarding succession tenancies and allocation, an issue that frequently comes up in her work as a board member. The course also briefly covered the Disability Discrimination Act which she says gave her ‘an insight’ into how she could apply it to her daily life: Ms Schneider has been a carer for 20 years looking after her disabled husband.

‘The course has fired me up so that I really want to learn more about housing management, mainly the legal aspects, to help us do our jobs better,’ she says.

Jill Young

Housing officer, Helm Housing Association, Northern Ireland

Course Housing officer in court
Provider Chartered Institute of Housing Northern Ireland
When taken 7 December 2009
Duration One day
Cost £70 per person when booked as group

The course has given Jill Young confidence to appear in court. ‘I had been to court last year when we had a really bad anti-social behaviour case. I was really nervous about it because the tenant had physically threatened [Helm staff] so I asked for this training because of that.

‘I wanted more confidence to be able to speak. There were a few things like the barrister trying to trip me up with different wording and I didn’t like feeling like I didn’t know what he was talking about.’

‘The course provided an overview of the court system and what the housing officer’s role would be when we have to go to court,’ explains Ms Young. ‘In my job I would be dealing with tenant anti-social behaviour and with eviction orders. If I was going to be in court giving evidence [it taught me] how to prepare a case file about the incident with statements from other residents.’

Ms Young says she now has a greater understanding of what she needs to prepare. ‘I’m more familiar with the jargon in court. There’s lots of law speak and unless you have a background like that [it’s hard] to understand how to act and how to speak [for instance, addressing the judge, even if the barrister is asking the questions].’

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