Community Legal Aid partners with area medical centers
Published: 06-19-2023 4:33 PM |
GREENFIELD – A local organization that provides free legal services to low-income and elderly residents has partnered with Baystate Franklin Medical Center and the Community Health Center of Franklin County to help provide free civil legal services to low-income residents of Franklin County and the North Quabbin region.
The partnership at Baystate Franklin Medical Center serves to enhance the EMPOWER +(Engaging Mothers for Positive Outcomes with Early Referrals) Family Clinic, a comprehensive, community-based screening and referral program serving pregnant women with substance use disorder, including opioid use. The EMPOWER + Family Clinic is based out of The Birthplace at Baystate Franklin Medical Center/Pioneer Women’s Health in Greenfield.
The partnership at the Community Health Center of Franklin County, meanwhile, serves to enhance its locations in Orange and Greenfield.
“Community Legal Aid is the sole provider of legal aid for poor folks and elders,” said Managing Attorney Jennifer Dieringer. “We have provided those services for decades. What this does is it really focuses our efforts on finding clients who might not find us otherwise. It relies on the trusted relationships that these folks develop with their medical providers.”
Essentially, she said, it provides a “streamlined” approach to connecting people with appropriate legal services.
“I think especially in more rural counties, it can be difficult for folks to know about our services, or access our services,” Dieringer said. “Having partnerships, like medical providers, to help where legal issues are interfering with health, and bring those people to us, it really helps folks in Franklin County effectively reach us and get help from us.”
Community Legal Aid holds office hours at Greenfield Family Medicine in Greenfield, which is part of Baystate Franklin Medical Center, and anticipates doing so at the Community Health Center’s Orange location beginning in early summer. Unless additional funding is secured, the Baystate Franklin partnership, which Baystate is funding, will continue through the end of June.
“Often, folks will have medical issues connected to poverty, not having enough funds to live in a safe place, to get enough food, so we work on folks who are at risk of losing their benefits … or folks who have applied or have denied.”
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On June 22, Community Legal Aid will host a virtual informational session, led by Alyssa Golden, senior supervising attorney for the CORI/Reentry unit, who will talk about the broad range of civil legal issues for which Community Legal Aid provides assistance, as well as options for addressing them, and the connections between criminal records issues and both race and disability discrimination. She will also share how folks can access legal assistance through Community Legal Aid.
Register in advance at https://tinyurl.com/CommunityLegalAction.
Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne.