We evaluated the effect of a hypocaloric low carbohydrate, hypocaloric moderate low fat, and Mediterranean diet without calorie restriction on weight and glycaemia in young adults with T1D and overweight or obesity. Then I may take a step back and have a career at the Bar.Co-management of weight and glycaemia is critical yet challenging in type 1 diabetes (T1D). “I want to get NCDV running on a fully national level. Although Connor sees his long-term future as a barrister, he says that he has no immediate plans to practise. He is just about to complete a one-year full-time BVC course at the City Law School (formerly the Inns of Court Law School) and, all being well, should be called to the Bar in July. “We are already acknowledged as experts and consulted at a high level, so I thought it would be helpful if I could back that up by being able to say I’m a barrister,” he says. Steve expects to qualify as a barrister this summer and hopes that having a formal legal qualification will give the centre added clout. It runs on a shoestring, heavily reliant on volunteers and capping staff salaries at £18,000 a year. NCDV staff take an initial statement: clients who qualify for legal aid are referred to a local firm those that don’t get free help from the centre itself. “Sometimes, we will have one of our trained McKenzie Friends at a court doing 10 applications in one day,” Connor says.Ĭlients are not charged for the service. The high degree of specialisation means that its processes are streamlined: clients can be seen quickly and the work is done speedily and cheaply. NCDV specialises exclusively in domestic violence work and could be characterised as a cross between McDonald’s and Claims Direct. The National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV) has branches in London, Guildford and Manchester and is on track to have branches in 16 areas within the next two years. We have also trained over 8000 police officers in civil remedies available regarding domestic violence. NCDV now has nine full-time staff, 12 permanent volunteers and has trained over 5000 law and other students as McKenzie Friends to accompany unrepresented victims into court. It started out with him and a friend, but is now a national organisation, covering 27 counties, and has helped approximately 10,000 victims last year to take out injunctions against their partners. In 2002, thanks entirely to Connor’s doggedness, the London Centre for Domestic Violence was formed. I just kept feeling that this must be able to be sorted if only someone would address it.”That “someone” turned out to be him. “I just couldn’t believe that there was no help available to people who did not qualify for public funds but could not afford to pay. The injustice of the situation got under Connor’s skin. Her boyfriend was very controlling and controlled all the money he kept the chequebooks and didn’t let her have access to the bank account.” “She had a part-time job and she and her partner owned their home. But, Connor says, her financial situation as it appeared on paper did not bear any relation to her financial situation in reality. The woman, who had a small child, did not qualify for public funding. Everyone was very eager to help until we sat down to fill in the forms for the legal aid means test,” he says. We just went from one to the next to the next to the next. “We must have seen 12 solicitors in a morning. She did not want to press criminal charges so the police suggested that she visit a solicitor to take out a civil injunction. The turning point in his life came when a friend, who was being abused by her partner, turned to him for support. On one occasion he was threatened with a machete, on another, he was nearly stabbed by a man he had arranged to meet on Clapham Common to serve with a non-molestation order: “He’d seemed really friendly on the phone…” The job (“I just saw it advertised in the paper”) was not quite as dull as it sounds. In 2001 he returned from a year in Australia (he says that he would not dignify describing it as a gap year), and took a job as a process server in South London. Today, as well as taking the Bar Vocational Course, he is chairman of the National Centre for Domestic Violence, a ground-breaking organisation that he dragged into existence after a friend could not get legal help to protect her from an abusive partner.Ĭonnor’s route to the Bar has been circuitous. Six years ago he was a fairly directionless 27-year-old. “Steve Connor, a student at City Law School, is a man on a mission.
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