Alaska Legal Services Corp. received an million dollars award through the National Science Foundation to expand the scope of a program which aims to improve access to legal assistance for people living in remote regions.
The group is training nonlawyers, also known as “community justice workers” in order to serve as advocates for Alaskans in court for a variety of less important legal matters. In the past year the Alaskan Supreme Court approved a waiver which allows this practice, which received the support of the bar association of the state.
In the rural regions within the state absence of qualified legal professionals causes an ALSC executive director Nikole Nelson refers to as”a “justice gap” where those with lower incomes, but with civil legal requirements which include domestic violence, debt and housing issues — don’t receive legal counsel.
Nelson claimed the legal system is “pretty nearly nonexistent” off of Alaska’s road network and therefore, lawyers are not a solution.
“We have more than 300 community justice professionals that have enrolled for our courses in training and be supervising and ready to meet this gap in services,” she said.
With the funds, Nelson and her colleagues will be able to train community justice workers in more difficult legal matters.
ALSC developed the project based on an alliance that the Alaska Native Tribal Health Coalition’s health aide program that provides health care aides to remote communities. The organization piggybacked on that strategy and> integrated civil legal services into health care settings too.
With the supervision of attorneys, Nelson said that community justice workers have assisted hundreds of Alaskans gain the right to access justice.
“When individuals have non-met legal demands this can affect their health and security, as well as their housing situation,” Nelson said. “So those who have these needs could lose their homes, they could lose their health insurance or be denied SNAP benefitsfor instance that a family may not be able to eat due to an unresolved legal matter.”
For instance social justice professionals from the community assisted hundreds of Alaskans receive food stamps, even as states were months in the back in the distribution of benefits.
Alaska Legal Services Corp. collaborates with the University of Minnesota Medical School and in the American Bar Foundation Access to Justice Research Initiative and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
Matthew Burnett, a senior program manager for the American Bar Foundation, said that the program is the very first example of using the community to address the “hidden problem” of access to justice.
“Community-led programs could provide an example of how we begin from the bottom instead of top down in terms of justice-related solutions. That’s a major change,” he said. “So instead of making them court-centric or lawyer-centric we are able to recognize the demands of the communities.”
The project has potential outside of Alaska as well that’s reason why National Science Foundation is funding the research.
“If you’re able to accomplish it in Alaska it is possible to achieve it in any other place,” he said.
