Page 1470 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
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update me on initiatives in their area. I was pleased to meet with them again this week. They brought with them a copy of the latest strategic plan for 2008-12 and a paper to highlight the latest program changes that fulfil some of the new directions they outlined in that document.
This paper is called the snapshot paper for 2009. There is mention made of recent research in Australia and overseas that, not surprisingly, reveals that conventional methods of providing legal aid services to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in our community do not necessarily meet their needs. These are groups such as the homeless, those living with mental illness and the elderly. I will read from the paper in relation to some of these initiatives:
• adopting a holistic … approach to service delivery by building relationships with other community services to facilitate cross referral of people in need of legal and other kinds of help;
• improving access by vulnerable and disadvantaged people to legal aid services by establishing outreach … services at community service hubs around the ACT;
• expanding and diversifying community legal education programs, and improving the targeting of legal information to those with special needs, and
• establishing a Prisoners’ Legal Service at the … Maconochie Centre … to protect prisoners’ rights and support rehabilitation by assisting prisoners and their families to resolve legal issues that arise during imprisonment and on reintegration into society.
• Establishing an outreach legal service for homeless people in the Territory, in partnership with community legal centres and the Aboriginal Legal Service.
I want to dwell a bit longer on that particular outreach to homeless people, which is called Street Law. It was just recently established and has a manager by the name of Amy Kilpatrick. Amy wrote to me about the program to give me a little bit more detail after the legal aid officers had been to see me.
The service commenced in November 2009 following a grant from the ACT government and a one-off grant from the commonwealth. It was a joint initiative of Legal Aid, the Aboriginal Legal Service and ACT community legal centres. It began by consulting with the homeless community as to where they should meet. They negotiated and discussed where they should provide this outreach service, with over 60 stakeholders, in order to help build an understanding of how legal aid could actually meet the needs of homeless people that are in need of their service. This resulted in not only the name Street Law, but also the provision of service through local advice centres. They will be providing services through local advice centres at host agencies, appointments booked at and through community services, and telephone advice.
There are going to be six host agencies for local advice around the city, including the Gungahlin Child and Family Centre, Migrant and Refugee Settlement Services, Indigenous services, some of the women’s refuges and regional community services.
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