Arch Disability Law Centre And Its ActivitiesARCH stands for Advocacy Resource Centre for the Handicapped and the ARCH Disability Law Centre is a Canadian non-profit specialty charitable community legal aid clinic. It promotes and defends the equality rights of disabled people through policy/law reform, legal education, and litigation. It has a provincial mandate in Ontario and is funded by Legal Aid Ontario. People with disabilities are prone to discrimination by better endowed people in society and are not in a position by themselves to fight such exploitation. They may be discriminated against or exploited on the basis of their gender, economic status, age, race, or sexual orientation. To counteract and fight such discrimination and exploitation, the ARCH Disability Law Centre is committed to provide to disabled persons free confidential basic legal information pertaining to their rights. It also provides them advice on estate planning, mental health, disability support, home care, disability-specific funding, transportation, and attendant services. It also provides them support against abuse. It initiates measures towards law reforms and is engaged in community development and test case litigation. It also operates a telephonic summary advice and referral service. The organization also publishes a newsletter named ARCH ALERT and which is distributed free to disabled people via mail, fax, or e-mail. The information it provides is of a general nature and not specific to a particular case. In case you want legal advice related to specific abuse that you have faced, you need to search and then consult a lawyer from any of the many legal firms in your city of residence. A lawyer representing a legal firm can advise you better on a specific violation of your disability rights, which the ARCH Disability Law Centre is not in a position to. The law reform related activities of ARCH Disability Law Centre include promotion of certain reforms. These reforms favorably impact the housing, employment, taxation, policing, homecare services, development, and telecommunications needs of disabled persons. Test case litigation is a case being fought in a tribunal or court on a contentious issue for the first time. ARCH Disability Law Centre engages in test case litigation that impacts a large number of disabled persons and fights for their rights on that issue. It also conducts disability analysis and brings that into the litigation. Referral services provided by the organization include help to disabled persons for civil litigation, criminal law, employment insurance, family law, and housing. It refers such matters of disabled persons to the appropriate lawyers. The ARCH Disability Law Centre, which is headquartered in Toronto, has over sixty disability service and consumer sub-organizations that form its members. These sub-organizations provide various disability-related helpful services to physically or mentally disabled people. |