NIU College of Law Health Advocacy Blog

NIU Law students participating in the Health Advocacy Clinic (HAC) typically spend one or two semesters at the clinic. One of HAC’s goals is to provide law students with practical legal experience during their time in law school. The high law student turnover means that the HAC Director must be creative to ensure that students have the opportunity to work on client cases as much as possible during their short time at the HAC. When students arrive at the beginning of the semester, client cases, usually involving the denial of Social Security disability benefits, are at various stages of development. Some cases are just beginning while others are weeks away from the long-awaited Social Security administrative law judge hearing. How is this high law student turn over and case development dilemma resolved? It is solved by assigning students to new, ongoing, or concluding client cases within days of arrival at the clinic and working to quickly prepare students to perform their assigned task...

It was Friday morning and I was waiting for a client to come fill out her Power of Attorney (POA) for Health Care. I was really excited for this because I had not had the opportunity to do an initial client interview yet, and this would be my first time assisting a client with completing a POA. I was also grateful I was able to have the experience of doing one, since POA Day was Wednesday,and I am scheduled Fridays at the clinic. Going into the situation I was very nervous. I had never done a POA before and I reviewed the POA documents, but actually doing interviews is always different than preparing for them. I definitely have seen that play out a lot this semester. You can prepare all you want for client interactions, but often they go nothing like you planned. Going into this experience I expected the client to have a lot of questions. This document is for long- term planning, and the population we work with at the Health Advocacy Clinic often does not have a lot of long-term plans ...

My second day at the clinic, I met with a client. She became emotional when discussing the passing of a loved one, even though it had happened a while ago. Having had a similar experience recently, and a much different reaction, I was shocked that she reacted the way she did. My oldest sister died this past spring. When it happened, it was almost the furthest thing from my mind. I was preparing for exams. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was just trying to get through one day at a time. On the day my sister passed, I was still awake at 5 a.m. when my mother called me. I had no idea why she was calling me so early. Through tears, my mom told me about her death. I can’t even say it was unexpected. My focus was on the exam I had to take in four hours. I’m fairly certain I even said something about still going to take the exam and not bothering going to Michigan to see my sister, albeit just her body, one last time. I ended up rescheduling the exam and going to Michigan, but my initial reaction w...

The Health Advocacy Clinic (HAC) is a medical-legal partnership with Aunt Martha’s Health and Outreach Center as well as Hesed House, the second largest homeless shelter in Illinois. Most of our clients are homeless. The ones who are not consist of low-income members of the community who struggle with poverty. Whether our clients stay in public housing or at Hesed House, they share one thing in common: their lives are stressful in a way that many of us cannot begin to comprehend. HAC clients frequently experience stress trying to secure basic needs such as shelter, food, and safety. The effects of such stress can have long-term effects on their bodies and overall health. “The longer the stress lasts, the worse it is for both your mind and body.” 1 Many of our clients are considered chronically homeless, which requires that they have been homeless for at least a year or have been homeless at least four times within the last three years and have a disability, and have therefore been sub...

“James” is client of the Health Advocacy Client who was recently awarded SSI benefits. This includes both a monthly payment and a larger award of back payments which will be paid out over several installments. As the Associate Director of Housing and Supportive Services at Hesed House, I act as his case manager. James began staying at Hesed House in April 2012. He became a Lighthouse client in December 2014 which means that he lives in an apartment in the Aurora community as part of our long-term, permanent supportive living program. When he was staying at Hesed, James was always getting sick because of his many health conditions. He is doing better now that he is staying in his own apartment. He even comes back and volunteers at Hesed when he physically can. Also, he’s very active in the Lighthouse community, especially by acting as a mentor for the younger residents which is beneficial for us as well. One of James’s goals since I first met him when he started staying at Hesed was to ...

Over the past several months, I have had the opportunity to briefly meet a number NIU HAC clients.  One Friday morning, I noticed that there was an older lady, with a piece of luggage, just sitting in the woods.  Later that day, I realized that this person was one of our clients and felt sad that she was sitting in the woods, all by herself on a cold Friday morning.  During our meeting with that client, and other clients since, I have been impressed with the fact that our clients are intelligent, personable, and capable.  In addition, I have come to the conclusion that we, as a society, could be doing so much more to help those who are homeless and in need.  We should explore how we can empower our clients to take advantage of all of their talents.  Specifically, there are ways to leverage technology and to teach practical skills that are in demand, such as bookkeeping and coding. Almost everyone in America has attended school (at least through the second year of high school).  In addi...

During my time working at the Health Advocacy Clinic over the summer, our group of three students was able to serve lunch in the cafeteria to guests in the PADS program. The cafeteria was pretty full; there were a lot of guests. Looking at the tables, I saw some guests who looked exhausted with their heads down. Still there were others attentive who ready to eat and very talkative. Then there were a few who sat alone in silence. We were met by a woman who worked in the kitchen and seemed to be running the show. She immediately asked, “Which one of you has the strongest stomach?” We all sort of looked wearily at each other and finally someone asked why. She informed us it was because that day, they were serving “delicious” pigs’ feet. The woman explained to us that a very nice large donation had come in and there were also specific requests for pigs’ feet. Right away, one of the other students stood up and said he would serve them, at which time I let out a sigh of relief, ran to the ch...