NHS Continuing Healthcare Scheme begins for 2021

Since it began in 2006, our NHS Continuing Healthcare Scheme with Hugh James has adapted and evolved. This month saw a new group of students start work on the latest iteration of the scheme but this time, during a pandemic.

Working remotely, 60 students have been chosen for the NHS Continuing Healthcare Scheme which is part of our successful Pro Bono Unit.

Unsurprisingly, lockdown measures have caused significant disruption to our face-to-face Pro Bono activities which ordinarily enable students to gain vital experience, working free of charge on a range of legal matters.

However, Hugh James were determined to continue working with us and our students.

Lisa Morgan, Head of Nursing Care at Hugh James, said, “The pandemic has had a huge impact on opportunities for students to gain the crucial insight and skills they need to forge a legal career. This scheme gives them real experience of working with clients and developing their key practitioner skills, while also providing us with an opportunity to work with tomorrow’s lawyers.”

Up until 2018, our NHS Continuing Healthcare scheme saw our students working with solicitors and paralegals at Hugh James to recover wrongly paid nursing home fees. Mostly working on behalf of relatives of dementia patients, the scheme recovered over £300k in fees and gave our students the invaluable opportunity to work on real cases.

In more recent years, the scheme adapted and became a work experience opportunity which saw our students work in Hugh James Nursing Care department on ‘dummy files’. This provided them with crucial experience in a niche area of law.

Thankfully, Hugh James have made it possible for our students to continue to access the ‘dummy files’ even though visits to their offices are no longer possible, meaning this invaluable experience can continue despite the challenging circumstances.

Hannah Marchant, Director of Employability at the School of Law and Politics said, “We are hugely grateful to Hugh James’ Nursing Care team, and to Partner Lisa Morgan and solicitor Katie Morgan in particular, for their willingness to continue to provide crucial employability and pro bono opportunities to our students, even in the difficult circumstances we are all currently operating in. We hope that this cohort of students find the scheme as rewarding as previous cohorts have.”