Exhibit No. 17 [FACSIMILE] STATEMENT OF THOMAS EHRLICH PRESIDENT OF THE LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION ON AGE DISCRIMINATION AND THE DELIVERY OF LEGAL SERVICES BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS- AGE DISCRIMINATION STUDY SEPTEMBER 27, 1977 On behalf of the Legal Services Corporation staff, I am pleased to accept this Commission's invitation to testify on age discrimination and the delivery of legal services. As this Commission knows, the Legal Services Corporation is not a Federal agency, although the Corporation does receive its funds from the Congress. In fulfilling our Congressional mandate to support civil legal assistance for the poor, we share your concern to prevent any discrimination on the basis of age in the delivery of legal services. This statement addresses four areas: the basic purpose and activities of the Corporation; the Corporation's special efforts on behalf of juveniles and the elderly; the work of legal services programs around the country to serve those groups; and the steps necessary to ensure that the elderly and juvenile poor are treated fairly in the delivery of legal services. I. The Legal Services Corporation is a private nonprofit Corporation established and funded by the Congress to provide civil legal assistance to the poor. There are approximately 29 million poor people, of all ages, in the United States, persons whose income and resources are below subsistence levels. For all but a very few of those people, the predominant issue in their lives is survival. Access to the legal system can be a vital means for poor people to obtain basic necessities, such as income, food, shelter, clothing, medical care and education. When the Corporation began operations in October 1975, nearly 20 million of the nation's 29 million poor people had little or no access to legal services. Either they lived in areas where no programs existed, or the programs in their areas could not provide sufficient service because of limited resources. As an initial priority, we undertook a short-term plan to provide a bare-minimum level of service throughout the country---the equivalent of at least two lawyers per 10,000 poor persons. In 1977, the Corporation received an appropriation of $125 million. This increase permitted, for the first time in this decade, a significant expansion of legal services programs in areas where the poor had little or no access to legal assistance. Expansion grants have been made to new or existing programs in 40 States, making a minimum level of legal assistance available to approximately 3.8 million poor persons who were previously unserved. The $205 million appropriation we will rceive in 1978 will enable us to expand service to an additional 8.3 million poor people at that level. With continued adequate funding from the Congress, we will be able to reach our short-term goal by the end of fiscal 1979. The process of stabilizing, strengthening, and expanding local legal services programs has special significance for groups---such as the elderly and juvenile poor---for whom the problems of too few programs and too few lawyers are compounded by a lack of physical access to legal services. With the security of continued funding, and substantially increased funds in many areas, programs will be able to undertake the outreach activities and expansion of services that were impossible in the years of retrenchment caused by frozen legal services budgets from 1970 through 1974. Further, it is a condition of each program's grant from the Corporation that it not discriminate in the provision of its services---or in its employment practices---on grounds of age or on any other basis prohibited by law. We have developed a complaint review procedure to ensure that any complaint against a local program alleging such discrimination can be thoroughly reviewed. We will continue to do all we can to ensure that no such discrimination in fact occurs. At the bare minimum level of funding afforded by the minimum access plan, however, it will be impossible to meet all of the legal needs of poor people. In contrast to the short-term goal of the equivalent of two attorneys for each 10,000 poor persons, there are fourteen attorneys in private practice for each 10,000 persons in the general population. It is against this background of a severe shortage of funding that the efforts of the Corporation and its grantees to meet the legal needs of poor persons of all ages must be considered. Of necessity, programs must set priorities in the allocation of their resources. The Corporation requires that in setting priorities, programs take into consideration, among other factors, the urgency of particular legal problems of eligible clients, and the general effect of the resolution of a particular category of cases on persons least able to afford legal assistance in the community served. Because of the enormous diversity in local circumstances, the Corporation does not mandate what procedure a local program shold follow to determine its priorities. We do require, however, that clients as well as employees of the programs participate in the prioritysetting process, and that the demographic distribution of eligible clients be considered. This regulation has been in effect for nine months. Our regional offices, in their quarterly monitoring visits, are now actively working to ensure compliance with the regulation. In addition, in their applications for refunding, programs must describe the nature of their priorities and the process through which they were set. Some programs have utilized surveys of community needs to help them in establishing their priorities. Such surveys have enabled them to reach a broad cross-section of potential clients, in addition to those who have requested the program's service. Through their boards of directors, surveys, and community meetings, programs are making a special effort to include the views not only of elderly and juvenile potential clients, but also of the community agencies that focus on the problems of those groups. II. Although our mandate is to provide legal assistance to all poor people regardless of age, race, or background, the Corporation has undertaken a number of activities, and is planning others, designed to increase the capacity of legal services programs to serve the elderly and the young. The Corporation has entered into a joint agreement with the Administration on Aging to ensure that the resources of both organizations are coordinated to provide the maximum legal services for the elderly. Based on that agreement, we have assigned an experienced legal services attorney to assist AoA in managing its program for legal services development specialists and in developing policies that will encourage the expansion of legal services for the elderly. The Corporation and AoA will work together to stimulate cooperative relationships between the aging networks and legal services programs. Legal services programs will be encouraged, for example, to make use of the outreach, education, and transportation resources of the aging network to expand services to the elderly. The exchange of training and community education materials on the legal rights of the elderly will also be facilitated and encouraged. The Corporation is now engaged in a major study of legal services delivery methods. A primary purpose in that study is to explore new means of serving groups with special problems of access to legal services. Eight of the 38 demonstration projects selected for the study focus particularly on the problems of the elderly poor. The remaining 30 projects will all include the elderly in their client groups. The first nineteen demonstration projects have been operating since the beginning of this year. of that group, Utah Legal Services is providing specialized legal services to the elderly in the southern rural part of the State, |