Agmt20 Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County and RWC 2020 MOU

Browse Search

that resources allow, LIBRE will also participate in state and national PIF efforts to develop community facing materials and approaches that can be used nation-wide, again, to magnify the message for immigrants. LIBRE will continue to use promotoras to provide daily outreach and to give timely feedback on the information and resources immigrants need at the moment. Our Project Coordinator will meet regularly with the promotoras to share best practices, refresh training, receive updates on emerging issues, and provide feedback that will allow us to improve our messaging and outreach. This feedback loop between immigrants, promotoras and LIBRE partners has helped us improve our educational materials and identify ways to have a greater impact. B. Public Benefits Application and Benefits Retention Assistance Although we expect application assistance numbers to drop further if "public charge" rules change, benefit eligibility criteria remain the same. Our community convening last fall affirmed the need to assist immigrants in applying for or maintaining public benefits through our bilingual application assistors at three trusted community service agencies: JobTrain, Coastside Hope, and Fair Oaks Community Center. LIBRE's application assistors play a critical role in mitigating barriers that would otherwise prevent immigrants from even applying for benefits. Their availability to follow up with applicants and to explain the process means that fewer eligible immigrants fall through the bureaucratic cracks. The assistors and promotoras have started meeting to increase the number of successful referrals to assistor sites. We have also reestablished our process with the County Human Services Agency (HSA) to track application results. This process will allow us to evaluate whether applications submitted with the help of our assistors are still approved at higher rates than those submitted directly through the County. We have also been working with the County to obtain caseload data trends in order to evaluate the effectiveness of our new, targeted outreach/messaging and follow- up. C. Legal Advocacy and Policy Work LIBRE attorneys will continue assisting immigrant individuals and families with immigration and government benefits issues to address barriers to receiving benefits. We will provide consultations about immigration options and services to file applications for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) renewals, VAWA (victims of domestic abuse), Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, and U visas (victims of certain crimes). We will advise and represent immigrants to appeal incorrect public benefit decisions, denials or discontinuances. We also will provide specific advice about public charge in individual cases. LIBRE attorneys will work with LIBRE partners to update public charge and immigration educational materials. Together, we will present the information at LIBRE outreach events. We will keep playing an active role in developing public awareness and engaging in strategic advocacy with local and state agencies in service of our client population. LIBRE will share our approach and materials with the national PIF organizations (Center for Law and Social Policy and National Immigration Law Center) to help create templates for others to replicate and, assuming adequate REV: 12-20-19 RL ATTY/AGR.2019.322/Legal Aid Society of San Mateo (Page 11 of 14)