From 30th September, we are changing how we give legal advice.
The only way to get legal advice from GMIAU will be to fill in our confidential online form. Our telephone advice line will no longer be operating after Monday 29th September.
Legal advice form
Our form to request legal advice can be found here: https://gmiau.org/help-and-advice/services/#referrals
There are four forms, with a general Advice Form, and specific forms for people who are experiencing domestic abuse, for children in care including unaccompanied children seeking asylum, and for referrals to our KIND service. If in doubt, use the Advice Form.
It is open Monday-Thursday, and information shared through the form is completely confidential. It won’t be shared with any other services or agencies.
We will respond to every request for advice as soon as possible, prioritising the most urgent requests. If we get forms with unclear information we will get in touch to ask more questions.
Help filling in the form
We know that filling in the form may be difficult for some people. Professionals signposting to GMIAU can help people fill in the form, which takes about 10 minutes to complete.
If you are struggling to fill out the form, you can call us on 0161 740 7722 on Fridays from 12-3pm for help filling it out. Please note we will not give legal advice on this phone line, only help people to fill in the form. This phone line is likely to be busy, so we are asking that people try to fill in the form themselves, and that partner organisations support us by helping people to fill in the form where possible.
Why are we making this change?
At GMIAU we are facing an overwhelming demand on our service. At the moment we can only take on legal cases for 10% of the referrals that come to us. For the people who we can’t represent, we want to help them as much as we can with legal advice on what to do next. This change is aimed at making the best use of our limited resources to help as many people as possible. It’s the first stage of an ongoing process to improve our ability to advise and provide legal information and education.
Though we are closing our telephone advice line, we are determined not to lose our personal, human connection to people who need our help. Every referral will get a response, and caseworkers can and will call people who we’re able to advise when needed.
If you work with people who use GMIAU’s services, please share this information with them so they know that they will no longer be able to use our phone advice line after the 29th of September.