A Mentoring Service – A Holistic Approach

Mentor Experiences guarantee that they will guide you to a competent Personal Injury Solicitor.

Any level of injury suffered by you in a non fault accident, or even a partially at fault accident, deserves the best legal advice which is working for you.

Mentor Experiences  : Phone 07986 837840.

E-Mail to : enquiry.mentorexperiences@yahoo.co.uk

Please remember courts want reports that will EVIDENCE your condition so they can allocate you the right compensation.

If your solicitor has not taken a written statement from you then you should be concerned.

Please click on the link, write to us so we can speak to you. It is free and so you have nothing to lose.  E-Mail to : enquiry.mentorexperiences@yahoo.co.uk We will not put any pressure on you, just give you the facts!

What does supporting the client and family mean?

First let me explain the problems that I feel that just relying on the legal profession for help and support is wrong and what difficulties they find themselves in.

The client solicitor relationship is one which relies on the solicitor being able to obtain the best settlement for their client. It means one thing only ie obtaining money. Advice is given on the best way of approaching this end ie obtaining professional expert reports for use in court and in a negotiation with the defendants and their insurers. Advice is therefore not the practical help that is needed on a day to day basis. Solicitor advice is also subject to the law of negligence and consequently is only given when required to further the case.

From our own experiences, we consider that we had the knowledge and capacity to cope with the strain that a catastrophic injury placed upon us and the family. Even so we found that it was extremely stressful and in fact very nearly even destroyed our strong marriage.

Once the catastrophic event has occurred it is essential that the injured party and their family have access to expert knowledge and the ability to solve the practical problems that will present themselves. This knowledge is needed as early as the time when the injured party is in hospital.

After the traumatic hospital period has ended the family will need a vast array of diverse skills to cope. Many will falter at this and even the more knowledgeable and able will struggle to obtain all the necessary skills to survive this obstacle course.

Areas where help will be needed.

Hospital

Coping with various aspects of medical and nursing procedures that will face the family.

Accident scene and Police procedures

The level of investigation can be problematic. In my experience unless the information is forcibly presented to quite a senior officer, notably a Chief Inspector in charge of the administration unit, then it is probable that there will be either no detailed investigation or one that is inappropriate to the level of injury suffered.

A mentoring service will review the accident site for causes of the accident and liaise with the Police administration unit to ensure that an appropriate investigation is taking place.

Once a prosecution takes place a mentoring service will ensure that the family are supported through the Magistrates Court case.

Choosing the right solicitor

The family have no-one to advise that a No Win No Fee arrangement is not necessarily the best way of proceeding. Even the allegedly specialist Personal Injury solicitor, being a member of a Personal Injury Panel, may not have the experience of the claimant’s injury. A mentoring service will guide the family to specialist firms of solicitors who deal with the most serious injuries BUT ONLY IF YOU FEEL THAT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. We are not ambulance chasing.

Setting up a home office for their civil claim.

Once the civil correspondence starts to arrive at the family’s home from their solicitor a mentoring service would be needed to liaise with the family to show them how a proper filing system and office needs to be set up.

Penny wise, pound foolish

A mentoring service will offer the family an opinion as to the best way to allocate any funds obtained by the solicitor. This will be done in liaison with the solicitor to ensure that local authority services are accessed.

Issues where money being spent by the family to fight the case arise in housing issues, occupational therapy/equipment issues and nursing care issues among others.

Expert Reports

A mentoring service will show the family that they can have a positive input into the contents and recommendations that make up the expert reports.

Housing

A mentoring service will guide the family through how to digest a suitably correct housing report and then implement a search for a suitable property. This must be done thoughtfully otherwise huge sums of money could be lost.

Equipment

A mentoring service will guide the family into how best to examine their personal circumstances as far as equipment is concerned. Even prior to an Occupational Therapy report being commissioned and written, equipment will be needed to ease the everyday problems that will arise.

How the state services interact with the private buying facilities again is an important area to maximize the family’s buying power. Dealing with state and council services can be difficult and tenacity in getting ones rights is something that must be taught.

One area of equipment needs that in our experience is urgently required is that of transport. Wrong choices of means of transport are very easy to make in the early stages of catastrophic injury cases.

Medical and Events Diary

This is not an obvious area of help but one which will become as valuable as an aide memoir once the hectic round of medical reports and statement giving are in full flow. It is in our view a vital skill to learn in order that the evidence can be best presented to the legal team.

Assisting the families in reviewing their personal statements.

A mentoring service will help the family to ensure that their draft statements are full and complete for the purposes of the evidence to be presented to the court. This can be done by explaining a simple formula/algorithm which covers all the areas that the court will be interested in.

Assisting the family in keeping proper receipts.

A mentoring service will help the family to set up a paper and electronic system of receipt keeping.

Disability Discrimination

The law in this area is mind boggling. A mentoring service will enable the family to become aware of the issues that face disabled people. The justifiable anger that ensues after a catastrophic injury and at the injustices faced by disabled people needs channeling in a positive way. A mentoring service will show the family how to do this and how not to waste time and energy in fruitless battles.

The Benefits System

A mentoring service will guide the family through the baffling benefits system. If the incorrect rate for the allowance applied for is allocated by the Department of Works and Pensions then the whole family will suffer.

This first application is crucial and needs handling correctly otherwise it is an uphill battle to retrieve the situation.

The Trial

It is hardly surprising that so many claimants fear the trial phase of the claim for compensation. The family’s solicitor will no doubt have prepared the claimant and family as far as evidence is concerned for the trial but how many will stay with the victim during the downtime moments? A mentoring service will stay with the family throughout the trial and ensure that they are not left feeling neglected.

Post Trial

Arguably this is the most important time of all. Post trial the family are left to their own devices. The legal process has ended and the compensation has been banked. Referral to Independent Financial Advisors might appear to the solicitor to be the right advice for the family, however Financial Advisors are ready to pounce upon the compensation money. Just as it is important to employ the correct solicitor and have the knowledge to ask the right questions, it is as important to ask the correct questions of the Financial Advisors before appointing them to look after their money.

A mentoring service will show the family how to negotiate a reasonable return of the commission paid and how to negotiate the rate of charges.

A Sounding Board

Our service is rare and possibly unique in the sense that we have legal training, both Uniform and Detective Police experience, Nursing experience, which includes the rare specialties and knowledge of Body Image and pain control, and life experiences of a catastrophic injury both personally and with living with someone who has undergone life changing surgery within the family setting. Consequently, our service is uniquely placed to listen and empathize with the claimant and his whole family. Relating our own personal experiences back to the family and our solutions to some of the problems we encountered will enable the family to develop their own coping strategies into their lives. This is NOT a counseling service for any mental traumas that may have been identified. It would be quite wrong to counsel an individual who is clearly suffering from a mental illness.

However the benefits of having an empathic sounding board is obvious and beneficial especially to the family of the claimant. To know someone who has gone through the trauma of the injury and the trauma of the legal system and to be able to offload their gripes and concerns and to be able to empathize as well as offering realistic and tangible advice to solve practical problems is support in action.

When reading and considering the above issues I hope you can see that a Mentoring Service can offer a lot.

E-Mail to : enquiry.mentorexperiences@yahoo.co.uk

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