The Temple Legal Aid Office has received a 2013 Community
Partner Award from Liberty Resources, Inc. for their work serving
people with disabilities. Liberty Resources is the Center for
Independent Living for the Philadelphia area. Professor
Spencer Rand accepted the award, which was given in recognition of
ten years of legal service by the Legal Aid Office to Liberty’s
consumers.
Each week, Professor Rand and his students travel to Liberty,
where they work with consumers on issues that allow them to
function more independently in the community. “Common
requests include helping consumers direct who can speak for them at
times that they cannot when medical and financial decisions have to
be made by drafting powers of attorney and advanced
directives. We also help people navigate the public benefit
system such as the Supplementary Security Income and Medical
Assistance programs, particularly when consumers want to work and
need to make sure that they still get medical benefits or income
support when the work they can do does not provide them with
sufficient income or health insurance,” explained Professor
Rand. In accepting the award, Professor Rand noted that
through this work, “students learn about enhancing consumers’
power. They learn that each individual has power within them
to control their own lives and that a lawyer’s role is to help the
person express and exercise that power to advance their
interests.”
The Temple Legal Aid Office is funded in part through a grant
from the Pew Fund, and receives additional support from the
Pennsylvania IOLTA Board.