The Legal Aid Centre at Linden has taken steps to evaluate its impact in the mining community over the years, and according to a random survey there is strong overall satisfaction with the services of the centre.
The preliminary findings of the client satisfaction survey support the view that legal aid is not a privilege, but rather one of several important societal mechanisms for maintaining the rule of law and ensuring equal access to justice for all.
According to Director/ Secretary Joan Ward-Mars, an attorney-at-law who is a volunteer among others in Linden, a preliminary analysis of the client satisfaction survey that sampled 111 Lindeners during mid-2011 indicated an urgent need for the legal aid services in the community.
The survey instrument, with no client identifiers, was administered to a sample of residents whose cases had been completed by the centre.
Participation was voluntary and clients were assured of confidentiality and anonymity. Clients’ views were solicited across all aspects of legal services measured by the questionnaire on a five-point (Likert-type) scale and entered into a database using the SPSS statistical software package. Open-ended comments were compiled in a standard text file.
“Descriptive results generated so far indicate that the overwhelming majority of clients reported overall satisfaction with the services provided by the centre, with 88.3% of the survey subjects (98 clients) reporting that they were very satisfied and 10.8% (12 clients) reporting that they were satisfied. The sole remaining client in the sample (.9%) reported being neither dissatisfied nor satisfied. Beyond the general assessments of overall satisfaction, preliminary results also indicate that the majority of clients provided positive ratings on the services they received on a number of parameters. Clients also felt that they were treated with respect and that the lawyers explained my options in a way I could understand (99%),” related Ward-Mars.
She said several survey items provided clients with the opportunity to provide comments in answer to open-ended questions. Cursory reviews of these comments so far provide insights into the challenges faced by vulnerable residents in the Linden community, and the desperate need for access to justice.
In response to the question regarding what would have been done in the absence of legal aid, several disturbing answers were received such as: “I would …… killed him”; “Had it not been for the legal aid I would have lost my sanity”; “I honestly believed I would have died”; “I would have continued in the abusive relationship”; “I probably would have been in jail because I was about to do whatever it took to protect my son”; “Cry because I had nowhere else to go”; “I don’t know”; “I would have spent years in it, enduring sorrow and problems, wanting to get out of the marriage and can’t get out”.
Analyses of the data are continuing and a complete report of the survey findings will be released in the near future. The directors of the Linden Legal Aid Centre also took the opportunity to thank USAID and UNICEF-Guyana for the financial support provided to bring access to justice to the Linden community and to appeal to the new government and parliamentary opposition for the funding of legal aid in Region 10. “Without the ongoing assistance and technical support from UNICEF-Guyana, even in the face of its own declining funding environment, the centre would have been forced to discontinue its operations,” Ward-Mars stated.
Over 1,000 residents, including victims of sexual and physical abuse and children in conflict with the law, have benefited from legal representation provided by the centre and the demand continues to increase on a daily basis.
