Meeting community needs - Village CAB

'There is a special and urgent need for more, and better co-ordinated Public Legal Education for those citizens who until recently had very poor rights, but where through much needed social reform, new rights and protections have become available - such as for lesbians and gay men.'

Tom Togher, Co-ordinator, The Village Citizens Advice Bureau.

Village CAB is a specialist service for the lesbian, gay and bisexual communities in the North West of England. The Village was launched in Manchester in July 1999 and is part of Salford Citizens Advice Bureau.

Read about Village Citizens Advice Bureau

Working with lesbian, gay and bisexual communities, Village combines specialist legal advice with community education and social policy work to meet the specific legal needs of their client group.

This project highlights the value of thorough and ongoing community needs assessment. Village addresses the specific legal information and education gaps experienced in the community and designs PLE projects to meet these needs.

Raising awareness

The Village was one of the key agencies raising awareness about the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) regulations introduced in December 2003 and were part of a 'Majority Matters' project funded by the DTI (Department for Trade and Industry renamed the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills). Community education on the regulations included holding information sessions with LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans) organisations in Greater Manchester, writing training materials on lesbian, gay and bisexual issues that could be used by other bureaux, using the radio to raise both employer and employee awareness of the regulations and distributing a factsheet on employment discrimination to organisations such the Pink Paper.

Social Policy - Civil Partnerships

Social policy work at the Village is illustrated by their civil partnership initiative. In December 2005, the Civil Partnership Act came into force giving same sex couples the right to legally register their relationship and have the same legal rights and responsibilities as married couples. In 2006, the Village commissioned academics to carry out research on the experience of individuals in same sex relationships who had formed civil partnerships during the first year.

While welcoming the new legislation, people interviewed during the research had found it difficult to access information. The findings revealed that information needs to be available in a web-based format, with options for both detailed and summarised content. The paper also recommended that the socio-legal aspects of civil partnerships should be addressed, such as the issue of the forced outing of anyone who has formed a civil partnership. The report recommended that information sources should include case studies or hypothetical scenarios, which would illustrate the types of situations that individuals may encounter when they have entered a civil partnership.

The Village website provides a range of advice for the lesbian, gay and bisexual community including detailed information on civil partnerships.

Related Project - SORBAEE Project

The Law Centres Federation's SORBAEE (Sexual Orientation, Religion or Belief and Age Employment Equality) project began in 2006 and focused on building the capacity of Law Centres to advise and raise awareness of the new legislation. During the project the LCF initiated a national 'Equality through Justice' campaign, and in partnership with Southwark Law Centre produced a DVD, 'Pride not prejudice' with series of accompanying worksheets.

More about the SORBAEE Project