{"id":5491,"date":"2015-04-21T15:49:30","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T20:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gnof.org\/?p=5491"},"modified":"2015-04-21T15:49:30","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T20:49:30","slug":"southeast-louisiana-legal-services-helps-delgado-students-jump-legal-hurdles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/gnof\/southeast-louisiana-legal-services-helps-delgado-students-jump-legal-hurdles\/","title":{"rendered":"Southeast Louisiana Legal Services Helps Delgado Students Jump Legal Hurdles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/201921087&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Southeast Louisiana Legal Services helps people tackle civil legal issues for a stronger, safer, better life.<\/p>\n<p>James Welch is a staff attorney at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, and two days a week he works at a place called Single Stop.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have so many students who come in here when they just need a rest, a place to come where no one is snarling at them,\u201d laughs Welch. \u201cUnfortunately, it\u2019s tough. This is like an oasis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The oasis is a two room office at Delgado Community College. Welch works there, at Single Stop, on Tuesdays and Fridays. He says, \u201cIt\u2019s not unusual to have the whole day filled, and if three people don\u2019t show up, we get four to take their place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Single Stop helps Delgado students navigate all sorts of confusing extra-curricular hurdles, like financial counseling, financial aid, budgeting money, and getting set up to receive a tax refund. There are Single Stops at over 100 community colleges in the United States, but this one, in New Orleans, is the only one<em>\u00a0<\/em>that has an attorney right there, in house. Which is huge.<\/p>\n<p>The average Delgado Community College student makes about $13,000 a year. About a third work \u2014 part or full time \u2014 and a third also have one or more children at home. On top of this, they\u2019re going to school; often they\u2019re the first in their families to go to school.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is their second shot at life,\u201d says Wlech. \u201cAnd they might have some serious problems in their background, but they\u2019re moving beyond that. And so I consider my job here is helping people have some success instead of a lot of failures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Juggling school, job, and home is hard enough, but if you\u2019re also going through a divorce or a custody case or bankruptcy or possible mortgage foreclosure, disentangling your legal situation can be totally overwhelming and expensive. Welch says helping students through this legal world is huge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019re trying to study and you\u2019re in a bad marriage or there was domestic violence or something like that, well then having that judgment saying you\u2019re divorced, you\u2019ve got custody, that takes a ten-ton weight off of your shoulders.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And there are other legal problems that can ruin a student\u2019s professional life. See, Delgado has a strong allied health program. Students train to go into professions like nursing, or to be surgical technicians or pharmacy technicians. If you want to be, say, a nurse or a sheriff\u2019s deputy, you can\u2019t get a license if you have anything on your criminal record.\u00a0 Not even a misdemeanor. Any mistake you made as a kid, in order for it not to ruin your adult future, you need to have it expunged \u2014 taken off the public record.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a formality more than anything else,\u201d says Welch, \u201cBut the problem is \u2014 and this is often in law \u2014 the formality gets is what gets you to the substantive issue, which is your license to practice medicine or nursing or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Southeast Louisiana Legal Services helps Delgado students get over this small but very significant legal obstacle. Take this nursing student, who didn\u2019t want us to use her name for confidentiality reasons. She\u2019s a mother, she gets great grades \u2014 which you have to, in order to even get in to nursing school \u2014 and she didn\u2019t know that a traffic misdemeanor might derail her entire career.\u00a0 She found out once she was already in nursing school.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI went to my teacher at the time and confided in her,\u201d the nursing student told me. \u201cI said, \u2018What am I supposed to do? Am I done with this? Do I have a chance?\u2019 You should go talk to Single Stop, and she gave me the phone number and from there on, they took me under their wing and he was there the whole time. And it meant so much cause I felt like he was in my court. You know, I\u2019m not in alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did you pay for these legal services that saved your career life?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnly the court costs. All the filing, the paperwork, the documents was all done for free. I will forever be grateful for Single Stop and Southeast Louisiana Legal Services and what they\u2019ve provided for me as a student as a single mom trying to better myself. I would never have been able to afford the legal services that they provided.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Southeast Louisiana Legal Services provides free legal aid in 25 parishes.<\/p>\n<p><em>Written by Eve Abrams for the Community IMPACT Series and produced by WWNO in partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation. Learn more about\u00a0the <a title=\"Southeast Louisiana Legal Services\" href=\"http:\/\/slls.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Southeast Louisiana Legal Services<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Southeast Louisiana Legal Services helps people tackle civil legal issues for a stronger, safer, better life. James Welch is a staff attorney at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, and two days a week he works at a place called Single Stop. \u201cWe have so many students who come in here when they just need a rest,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":5492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-front-page-small-feature","category-our-community"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Southeast Louisiana Legal Services Helps Delgado Students Jump Legal Hurdles | Greater New Orleans Foundation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/gnof\/southeast-louisiana-legal-services-helps-delgado-students-jump-legal-hurdles\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Southeast Louisiana Legal Services Helps Delgado Students Jump Legal Hurdles | Greater New Orleans Foundation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Southeast Louisiana Legal Services helps people tackle civil legal issues for a stronger, safer, better life. 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