November 2018 marks the birth of a new partnership between the University of Strathclyde Law Clinic’s Welfare Project and St George’s Tron Church of Scotland.

The Clinic’s Welfare Project, reached out to the church’s minister, Alistair Duncan, who has been more than willing to accommodate the project within the church. St George’s church has various partnerships with humanitarian organisations including Glasgow City Mission and Bethany Christian Trust.

The Welfare project has already run two introductory sessions on 21 and 28 November. In January 2019, the project will start running fortnightly triage sessions between 3:30pm and 4:30pm on a Wednesday at St George’s Church, 163 Buchanan Street, Glasgow G1 2JX, for an initial six-month trial period.

Through these sessions, we hope to reach clients who are dealing with welfare benefit appeals. Our project will focus on those clients who are looking to appeal at Tribunal level. We will assist clients with preparation to self-represent at hearing, or in certain cases, we may represent clients.

The Welfare project will also be triaging clients with a range of legal issues and would therefore be able to refer clients to the Law Clinic for further advice and representation where appropriate.

Through this new location, the Welfare project aims to reach clients who would otherwise not know about or be able to access the Law Clinics services.

The Welfare Project Coordinator Kudakwashe Chinyani commented on the new partnership stating:

“All students involved are all excited to be making this step and we are grateful for the support of St George’s Tron Church.”

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