Lewisham Multilingual Advice Srvice Service (LMLAS)

Lewisham Multilingual Advice Srvice Service (LMLAS)

At a glance

Causes

  • Black, asian and minority ethnic groups
  • Counselling / advice
  • Financial inclusion
  • Housing and homelessness
  • Men
  • Older people / later life
  • Poverty relief
  • Refugees / migrants
  • Voluntary sector support
  • Women

Other details

Geographical remit: 
Local

Objectives

LMLAS  aims to improve access to services for people in greatest need from BAMER communities in Lewisham, especially where English isn’t their first language. We provide access to high quality, impartial and culturally sensitive advice, and advocacy and information services to users in 11 community languages.

We are unique in that we deliver all our face to face advocacy support, legal advice and information in the top 11 community languages spoken by our users. We support them to take control of their lives, improve their chances of finding work and to become independent and contributing local citizens and so reduce their dependency on public resources.

LMLAS holds AQS quality mark. We are also a partner of Advice Lewisham Consortium which consists of seven local agencies.

 

 

Activities

  • Advocacy: As advocates we act as intermediaries with social services, schools, local authorities and health professionals to help get the best results for service users
  • Legal advice: We deliver legal advice on welfare benefits, housing, employment and debt in the user’s mother tongue. We have achieved and use the Advice Quality Standard Casework level 2 award
  • Supported referral service: We refer legal matters to other providers and provide users with a supported referral and interpretation service to enable them full access to the level of advice that they need e.g. immigration level 3
  • The HUB: Many service users are unable to navigate computer and on line systems so we provide a twice weekly drop in that supports them to upload supporting essential evidence for their housing, welfare benefits or other advice claims online. The hub also provides an online job search and employability support service. We also deliver I.T workshops for those who need this support to learn how to navigate systems, use tablets, mobile phones etc.

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