Archive for the ‘broward’ tag
Public Benefits Advocacy in Broward
Sometimes we get examples of particularly effective advocacy and like to pass the same along to spotlight the good work being done. This time, we have a docket of successes from Delores Gilmore, an advocate at the Legal Aid Service of Broward County.
Client had a 9 month old child and was working at Target and she was homeless. She had been receiving a welfare check but left the system for a job. This means that she could access certain support dollars that had been allocated for people such as her to ensure that they were able to retain their job. The client applied for assistance with housing and needed help with her security deposit. She was turned away flat and denied. After review of her case I found out that she was still receiving about $80 in welfare money each month due to her low pay. There is a provision in TANF that allows for a “cash severance” of $1,000 if the client stops her $80 welfare check and promises not to request welfare for in the least 3 months. After some time I was able to assist this client with support service assistance from WorkForce One in the amount of $800 and with WorkForce One and Department of Children Families to ensure that she received the cash severance benefit of $1,000. All the while the client was working, looking for a place to live and dealing with her homelessness. Now she has secured a place to live and continues to work. She has promised to go back to WorkForce One for assistance with training as soon as she gets things settled. More after the break!
For the Public Good - Legal Aid Service of Broward County Honorees
Over 300 guests are expected to attend Legal Aid Service of Broward County’s (LAS’s) 8th Annual FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD gala, an evening of awards and entertainment that will celebrate the agency’s 35th year of providing civil legal services to the underserved in Broward. The dinner will be held on May 15, 2008 at the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina to benefit children and families. Its theme: “YOU’VE BEEN SERVED.”
Honoree Chairs of the event are TERRENCE AND MARY KAY RUSSELL AND RUSSELL E. AND JANET CARLISLE. The 8th Annual for the Public Good Committee, co-chaired by Katherine Birnbaum, Esq. and Juliette Lippman, Esq. of Kirschbaum, Birnbaum, Lippman & Gregoire, PLLC, is seeking sponsors, commemorative journal advertisers and gathering Silent Auction donations.
“In these difficult economic times, we are especially grateful to Dr. Arthur and Belinda Keiser for their MAJOR CIRCLE sponsorship,” said Kathy Thomsen, Director of Development for LAS. Read the rest of this entry »
Protecting Affordable Housing
In these tough economic times one thing’s for sure: they’re not building any new affordable housing. And in rare instances when they do, what passes for new “affordable” housing is often out of the financial reach of our clients. For this reason, preserving existing stock of truly affordable housing is an important piece of our work.
Some families can’t move because they don’t have the money. The school district and social service agencies are collaborating to keep them from ending up homeless. Legal Aid has filed a lawsuit against the town of Davie for allowing the park to close, and against the owners for closing it.
The suit claims the town didn’t follow state procedures that say there must be plenty of affordable housing available before the closure of a mobile home park.
”Mobile homes may not be our dream affordable housing. I’d rather see them in permanent structures. But when you close a mobile home park, you’re destroying affordable housing,” Legal Aid attorney Janet Riley said.
And in Pahokee, there’s a similar attack on affordable and fair housing. There, a landlord is trying to force all families with children from an apartment complex, in violation of federal Fair Housing laws.
An advocacy group has filed a discrimination complaint with Palm Beach County’s Office of Equal Opportunity against a company that forced some of its Pahokee-area renters to move to make way for a ministry for ex-prison inmates.
The group, Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, along with the Fair Housing Center of the Greater Palm Beaches, is also trying to help the renters file fair-housing complaints against Alston Management Inc…
Guerrier could say this much: “This is a fair housing issue. The issue is families with children are being targeted.”
Legal Aid Society paralegal Rick Collier said his group filed its complaint Friday.
Medicaid Recipients can leave HMO for good cause
More good news for victims of so-called Medicaid reform.
Medicaid HMO patients will be allowed to drop out of their health plans and switch their care to other doctors under a pair of administrative and legal actions recently approved by the state. Medicaid HMO patients will be told that they can leave their health plan if their doctors aren’t in the network of the managed care organization or if their care is poor, denied or unreasonably delayed, among other things…
“As the state moves more and more to managed care, these rights become more critical,” said Florida Legal Services attorney Miriam Harmatz, lead counsel on the class-action suit filed a year ago in Fort Lauderdale…
Harmatz represented David Reed, David Mitchell and Joann Brown, three Medicaid recipients who filed a class action suit last year on behalf of the 200,000 Medicaid beneficiaries enrolled in the Medicaid Reform counties. The suit alleged that AHCA violated their rights and federal law by failing to let them know they could leave their managed-care plan at any time if they had a good reason.
AHCA tried unsuccessfully to dismiss the case. On Nov. 20, the agency signed a settlement agreement with Florida Legal Services and Broward Legal Aid.
Carlisle, a father of IOTA, receives Simon Award
From The Florida Bar:
Russell E. Carlisle of Fort Lauderdale has been selected as the recipient of the 2009 Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award. The award will be presented by Chief Justice Peggy A. Quince at a Jan. 29 ceremony at the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee.
Russell E. Carlisle
Two issues in immigration: human trafficking & migrant workers
Florida is one of the top three states for the crime of human trafficking, reports the SunSentinel. They covered a rally in Broward County that was attended by representatives of Legal Aid Service of Broward County.
The Charlotte Sun ran a story on immigration that focused on a recent talk given by Sister Maureen Kelleher…
Sister Maureen Kelleher, attorney advocate, managing attorney of Legal Aid Services of Collier County, and consultant to Catholic Charities of Venice, brought answers to these and a host of other questions Friday evening to a packed hall at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church.
Kelleher’s presentation was titled “Immigration: Where do we go from here?”
“When I was deciding how to use my education to help people, I considered going to El Salvador or Haiti to work, but was concerned about the volatile situations in both countries,” Kelleher said. “After much thought and prayer, I began my work with migrant workers and families in Immokalee in 1983, and made it a permanent vocation in 1984 by helping migrant farm, food service and construction workers achieve legal status, although I have since visited El Salvador, Haiti and Guatemala several times to witness living conditions firsthand.”
Both articles are worth the read.