Our
History
Our charity was born in 2011, and since then we have helped over 5,000 people with life threatening/terminal illness in the North East of England to sort out their legal affairs, ensuring they have peace of mind and quality of life at this pivotal time in their lives.
The Start Of LegaCare
Legacare was originally started by our current CEO, Meg Kirby who sadly witnessed people receiving aggressive treatment in hospital which made her think that if people were so ill they may have unresolved legal issues that were worrying them and that could possibly be impacting upon their treatment and health. Her vision was to enable people who were affected by the diagnosis of a life-threatening/life-limiting illness to have access to free legal help irrespective of their social or financial background. Meg started Legacare back in 2011 and from there whilst it only has three Solicitors, as at 2021 Legacare has assisted over 5,000 people in the North East.
Our Mission
Our mission is to increase the number of people we can assist through recruiting more solicitors. We also want to continue to raise awareness of the need of our services through training and education to NHS and social care professionals who refer their patients to us. This will then give them the confidence to be able to ask patients if they need legal help, in the knowledge it is available to them.
Our Focus
The people we help are those who would normally not bother asking for legal help because they come from the poorest parts of the North East and already have to face many struggles and see the accessibility to legal help as something way beyond their reach. It’s our goal to help them by undertaking any legal work that is required so that they can concentrate on their treatment and getting better, but where their prognosis is poor then our aim is to alleviate their stress so they can have improved quality of life in their last months, weeks or days of life.
The Board
We would be lying if we said we had not had an uphill struggle in continuing our service and it is only recently that we feel confident enough to be able to say we are here to stay. As a result, we are delighted that our board now consists of 8 board members who have expertise in health and social care, business strategy and development, human resources, training and education and accounts.
Our Geographical Reach
Whilst our office base in the North East, because of the nature of the work, our expertise and understanding of our clients’ needs, and with the support of our Board we believe that with the right funding in place our services could be developed so that they would be available across the whole of the UK.
Our Future Plans
We plan to expand across the UK as we have already put in place the infrastructure to start work with other NHS Trusts outside the North East. For the long-term we plan to have Solicitors in every major city who can provide face to face support for people when they are most vulnerable.