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LawCare—an essential caring service LawCare is a registered charity which provides support and advice to lawyers suffering from health issues such as addiction to alcohol or drugs, depression, stress and eating disorders. LawCare was established in 1997 to address the problem of alcohol misuse among members of the Solicitors’ profession in England and Wales. Since then its work has grown to encompass Barristers, Legal Executives and Judges, and it covers the entire United Kingdom. In addition a large number of helpline calls now relate to problems such as stress, bullying and clinical depression as well as addiction. LawCare’s core funding is provided by several professional bodies including the Law Societies of England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland, the Bar Council and ILEX. This funding covers such things as staff salaries, publicity, office expenses and materials – but barely. LawCare operates on an extremely tight budget. Demands The number of new case files opened is rising and volunteers are kept busy providing invaluable individual support and friendship to suffering lawyers. However, we know that there are still many lawyers who have never heard of LawCare and are unaware of the help available. We need to advertise extensively in order to reach them, but are very limited by the lack of available funds. LawCare has also developed the preventative education side of its work, and offers presentations, seminars and workshops on stress and related subjects. These are offered free of charge (except for expenses) and carry CPD points. Demand for these is increasing and although we welcome this and hope that it will prevent many lawyers needing our help in future, resources are stretched tight Callers to the LawCare helpline are guaranteed confidentiality partly because our freephone numbers mean that their call to us will not appear on a telephone bill. In addition, those who have financial problems, often because of alcohol abuse or being forced out of a job due to stress, illness or bullying, can call LawCare for help without having to worry about the cost. The freephone arrangement means that LawCare has to pay for each incoming telephone call, at an overall cost for calls alone of €2,000 per year. LawCare has helped the legal profession for over ten years and now we want to ask the legal profession to help us. We are aware that some firms and lawyers are struggling, but also that there are others which are able and eager to be charitable. As the charity that is there to help you, we would ask whether you might consider giving something back by making a donation to LawCare, either to its core funding, or to the Welfare Fund. Core Funding LawCare has only five members of staff—four of them part-time—and staff work from home to save on the costs of running an office. The money received from the professional organisations pays their salaries, but additional donations would help us to expand the service we can offer. For example additional donations would enable us to pay for more advertising to reach lawyers in need of help the helpline telephone bill, overtime so that a staff member can travel to a firm of solicitors to inform them about preventing stress and related problems. Even a donation of less than a euro can cover the postage of sending an information pack (provided free) giving valuable advice about their difficulty to a helpline caller. Welfare Fund LawCare has a Welfare Fund which is kept separate from its main funding and is used solely to help lawyers in need of professional treatment or counselling who are unable to afford it themselves. A session of counselling costs around €60, and a stay in an inpatient alcohol treatment centre costs over €6,000, but both these things make a huge difference to the life of a suffering lawyer. The Welfare Fund, and the treatment provided through it, really does save lives. The Welfare Fund provided six sessions of counselling for a trainee solicitor who had a large debt accrued through paying for her own law degree. The counselling helped equip her to stand up to her bullying supervisor and cope with the stress of a busy firm. The Welfare Fund paid for part of the cost of a stay at a treatment centre for a lawyer addicted to alcohol whose problem was so acute that he was unable even to get up in the morning without a drink. As we are there to help others, it is not easy for us to ask for help ourselves, but we know that we are simply not reaching all of those who need to be reached and cannot do so with existing resources. Hopefully you will never need us, but there will be many who do. Will you help us reach them? Click on the button below to donate online using your credit or debit card
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