Central England Law Centre (CELC) is one of 11 partners contributing resources and skills to deliver ‘MiFriendly Cities’ – an Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) project aimed at supporting the integration and empowerment of migrants across Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton.

CELC provides families and individuals from migrant backgrounds with legal advice to help ascertain and gain legal status, citizenship, and support entitlements. The Team perform ‘Legal Health Checks’ for clients and distribute materials aimed at raising awareness of their services and practical advice and support. This leads to help with fee waivers for those eligible, legal status applications, accommodation, and benefit applications.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic CELC went into schools and promoted its services and key benefits to parents and staff through presentations. Unfortunately, this outreach work had to stop when lockdown measures forced schools to close due to coronavirus.

Re-engaging with Schools

With in-school presentations no longer possible, CELC took initiative and contacted over 500 schools across the West Midlands, to share more information about the support CELC could provide. This became even more critical as coronavirus measures impacted on many aspects of the lives of migrants in the region, not only across rights to public funds and employment issues for keyworkers, but the impact on people’s economic circumstances and home life.

Read more on the MiFriendly Cities website.