Norwegian Cancer Society Legal Aid
The Norwegian Cancer Society outreach for free legal aid to cancer patients and their next of kin
The Norwegian Cancer Society (NCS) is one of the largest organizations in Norway representing the voice of those affected by cancer. Our organization consists of 113 000 members, 25 000 volunteers and 190 employees, all dedicated to promoting the cancer cause. NCS works continuously to improve society’s attitude towards the prevention and treatment of cancer. We fight cancer locally, nationally and globally through research and preventive measures, information, support, advice and lobbying.
Improving Quality of life – fulfilling the patients legal rights
Our goal is to achieve optimal life quality for cancer patients and their families. As a part of this effort, we work to ensure the fulfillment of the patient’s legal rights. Norwegian cancer patients are lucky in the sense that Norway has an extensive set of patient’s rights and social safety-net (Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration). We in NCS however often find that many patients are unable to have these rights fulfilled. Which is often due to difficulties navigating the “jungle” of different rights and different governmental agencies.
This coupled with relatively high legal fees means that many vulnerable cancer-patients are unable to have their legal rights fulfilled.
It doesn`t help having good rights as a patient if you do not get them fulfilled – our goal
NCS therefore strive to ensure that cancer patients and their relatives know their rights and that they get the rights fulfilled in practice. Our goals are:
- that Everyone who contacts the Norwegian Cancer Society’s legal aid should experience our legal aid as useful
- All cancer patients should know that it is possible to obtain free legal aid from the Norwegian Cancer Society
And as we learn from the individual cases, we are able to identify systemic challenges, and raise them to a system level, were we work to address the issues politically.
How we work
In 2018 we gave free legal aid more than 4000 cancer patients (out of aprox. 34 000 cancer patients in total). More than 70 % of the cases was in some way related to obtaining certain rights from the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, e.g. sickness benefits. We also assisted patients in regard to patient rights, patient injury compensation, insurance issues and with employment disputes.
Our service consists of two attorneys at our main office in Oslo, and over 100 volunteer lawyers. The volunteers staff our various patient-centers and offices located in different cities in Norway (Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim, Tromsø, Bodø, Kristiandsand) and were planning additional expansion to the cities of Tønsberg and Hamar in 2019.
We aim to offer the patients a full-service offer and are authorized by the Norwegian supervisory board for attorneys as a legal aid business. The patients can contact us at our various locations, send mail and e-mails and by phone.
We provide the patients with either counsel for “self-help” or take on their cases as their attorney. In the latter case, we write assist with legal writs to the appropriate governing body and to the courts.
In 2019 we expect to handle even more cases as we expand our service, both in numbers and in depth.