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Two fold boost for community legal centres
Date created: 29 November 2007
A $1.45 million funding package will boost the ability of selected community legal centres to provide more family violence related services and will also increase the general capacity of several regional and rural community legal centres (CLCs).
The funding, part of VLA’s $15 million 2007-08 budget for all Victorian CLCs, will give CLCs:
- ten new specialist family violence lawyers plus administrative support
- five new general lawyers plus administrative support
- one new legal position for the Homeless Person’s Legal Clinic.
The provision of more family violence lawyers partly stems from the 2006 review of family violence laws by the Victorian Law Reform Commission. The review, which considered a submission by VLA, made several specific recommendations regarding access to legal services for both applicants and respondents to intervention order matters.
‘In most courts, VLA and CLC staff will be available to assist the parties to family violence matters,’ said VLA’s regional offices manager Michael Wighton. ‘The early provision of accessible legal services in family violence matters improves the quality of the court experience for all parties and helps bring about sustainable outcomes for people who have experienced family violence.’
The specialist family lawyers will work in the following CLCs: Broadmeadows, Footscray, Dandenong, Gippsland, Werribee, Geelong, Warrnambool, Knox, Women’s Legal Service, and Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention Legal Service.
The general lawyer positions have been allocated to the following rural CLCs: Albury- Wodonga, Central Highlands (Ballarat), Loddon-Campaspe (Bendigo), Murray-Mallee (Mildura), and Warrnambool. These rural positions have had a special funding loading applied, recognising the additional costs and challenges of providing community legal services in country areas.
‘We have made some inroads into improving funding for regional centres in recent years, particularly at Geelong, and believe that these new positions will go some way in addressing these special needs,’ said Mr Wighton.
The new position at the Homeless Person’s Legal Clinic will mean the clinic would be able to better coordinate and support the work of the seconded private lawyers who staff the service at six shelters around Melbourne.
‘The CLC funding program has almost doubled in size since 2000, and VLA is committed to continuing to build the capacity of our partners in the community legal sector to provide both general and specialist services to their communities,’ said Mr Wighton. ‘It’s an exciting era for CLCs.’