law centre clients

The Hammersmith Law Centre is due to lose 60% of its funding in cuts voted for by the Tory Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Thousands of poorer people in the borough will lose access to the free legal advice, support and representation that the centre has provided for nearly 30 years.

This site is now adding interviews with people who have gone to the law centre for legal help and advice over the years.

Below, law centre clients Vanildo and Claudia Fernandas explain why they sought help from the law centre. They took advice from the law centre this year about emergency housing and benefits.

Vanildo Fernandas was waiting for a bus on Fulham Palace Road very late one night last October when two men walked over and attacked him with a couple of knives. 'Maybe for a robbery,' Vanildo's wife Claudia says. 'I don't know what they did it for. He was waiting by himself for the bus. There was one Iranian guy and one Afghan guy.'

Vanildo, 29, had just finished a night-shift in the restaurant kitchen he'd been working in for about a fortnight. 'When he finished the night, he called me to say that he would be home in about 30 minutes,' Claudia says. Needless to say, he wasn't. 'They cut him everywhere – here, on his throat (they cut his oesophagus open), on his arms, and down his chest. There is nerve problems in his arms now. He has to also have food and drink through a tube in his stomach [because the cut to his oesophagus is still open]. It is [going to take a long time] for him to heal. He is frightened, very difficult. I worry about leaving him alone. There is, um, how do you say it, his imagination?'