This is a plea for donations to RAD Deaf Law Centre (DLC) to allow us to give free one-off advice to D/deaf clients on disability discrimination matters.

Over 700 D/deaf clients received advice on disability discrimination matters from RAD DLC between April 2008 and March 2011.

Since April 2008, RAD has been funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) Legal Grants Programme to provide legal advice and advocacy to D/deaf and hard of hearing people in England, Wales and Scotland. Between April 2008 and March 2011, RAD’s Legal Services (now DLC) team dealt with 479 enquiries and took on 228 cases on discrimination matters in the areas of employment, housing, education and goods, facilities and services. Altogether, over 700 individual D/deaf clients have benefited from this service, a phenomenal statistic.

Mainstream advice services are not able to meet the needs of D/deaf people. D/deaf people therefore rely on specialist legal advice services such as those provided by RAD DLC. By stopping the EHRC’s Grants Programme in March 2012, hundreds if not thousands of D/deaf individuals have been denied access to accessible legal advice on discrimination matters.

We have calculated that the approximate cost for RAD DLC to deal with one disability discrimination enquiry is £18.52. We need to raise this money as we do not currently receive any funding to provide this type of legal advice, and are unable to rely on central funds.

RAD DLC only needs £18.52 to give one-off advice to one Deaf client on disability discrimination.

So far we have raised £300, which will allow us to give 16 D/deaf clients free one-off advice. While this is great news for 16 clients, we would like to raise at least £1,000 in order to be able to give a total of 50 clients one-off advice on their disability discrimination issues. Obviously, the more we raise, the more clients we can advise.

A team of individuals, including RAD staff, freelance interpreters and supporters, are walking 10km on Monday 21 May 2012 to raise money for this vital cause in the London Legal Support Trust’s London Legal Walk 2012. More information can be found here.

So, please, please, please donate generously.