Corporate Plan 2025–26

Our Corporate Plan 2025–26 outlines our priorities for the year, our performance targets and annual budget, as well as our strategic advocacy priorities.

This plan aligns to our Strategy 26 and our Outcomes Framework.

Over the year, we will prioritise addressing unmet client needs in the regions, providing culturally safe services and listening to client voices in the design of services and programs. We will also work closely with our sector partners to improve the coordination of service delivery and ways of working.

Our priorities

Clients have increased access to justice

Expand our in-house practice in family law across regions to facilitate access to justice for clients and support the market for legally aided services.
Increase access to our services to the Ovens Murray region.
Upgrade our regional offices to improve the staff and client experience.
Expand our Help Before Court and Independent Family Advocacy early resolution services across the state, with a continued focus on reducing court delays and increasing diversion.
Respond to significant reform to bail, committal and youth justice laws and systems, including by promoting prevention, diversion and earlier resolution of legal matters.
Embed and expand the Mental Health Legal Rights Service.
Enhance the quality of services our staff and practice partners provide through streamlined practice standards and improved training and support.
Establish new intake processes for our services to better respond to client needs and capabilities.
Refresh our client-focused strategies and policies to ensure that our services remain client-centred, inclusive and effective in meeting client needs.
Embed working with lived experience experts in the design, delivery and evaluation of our remand and Assessment and Referral Court services.
Develop a First Nations Strategy to support our organisational understanding of First Nations self-determination, increase accountability to Victorian First Nations community and guide organisational readiness for statewide Treaty outcomes and earnest engagement in the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service's Justice Treaty development project.
Strengthen practice and uphold justice by aligning our practice and service delivery with the First Nations Cultural Capability Framework to ensure First Nations clients are culturally safe, respected and empowered in all aspects of the Victorian legal profession.

Improved legal understanding in the community

Embed enhanced service delivery in Legal Help, including establishing a dedicated First Nations Legal Helpline.

Collaborative and coordinated legal assistance sector

Expand services to support the new Wyndham Court in collaboration with our sector partners.
Collaborate with National Legal Aid on advocacy for improved practice partner fees.
Review our fee structures and other supports for expert reports.
Complete requirements and start to implement a grants management system to improve the staff and partner experience.

Fairer laws and systems

Our strategic advocacy priorities include:

safety for women, gender-diverse people and children – systemic reform to improve safety for women, gender-diverse people and children, including reducing misidentification of the primary aggressor of family violence
First Nations justice – implementation of recommendations from the Yoorrook Justice Commission to ensure lasting and systemic change
children’s contact with the legal system – promote holistic and diversionary supports and responses to children to prevent contact with the legal system, including through:
- providing earlier therapeutic supports to families where children are using violence or behaviours of concern
- raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 and the age of imprisonment to 16 without delay
- ending the over-criminalisation and the disproportionate representation of First Nations children and children of colour in the youth justice system
child protection – reforms to the child protection system embedding children’s rights, improving fairness and supporting families to stay together where it safe and appropriate to do so
criminal justice system – reduce involvement in the criminal justice system and minimise the harm it causes to all participants, including through sentencing reform, improving access to therapeutic and culturally appropriate approaches, and embedding restorative justice
bail reforms – reforms to the bail system, including:
- addressing the discriminatory and disproportionate impact of the Bail Act 1977 on marginalised groups
- increasing access to bail supports, early intervention and prevention programs
police and custodial oversight – promote mechanisms that create greater accountability, transparency, fairness and access to independent police and custodial oversight
mental health reforms – mental health reforms that promote consumer rights, embed consumer leadership, self-determined responses and cultural safety, and increase accountability to:
- work toward the elimination of compulsory treatment, and seclusion and restrictive practices
- address overrepresentation of First Nations consumers
federal systems – strengthen rights and accountability across federal systems, with a particular focus on social security, migration, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and human rights and equality reforms.

Learn more about our strategic advocacy priorities.

Effective and sustainable Victoria Legal Aid

Implement our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy.
Implement the psychosocial wellbeing framework to ensure staff are supported and we manage psychosocial risks, including workload and work demands.
Complete planning for, and start to implement, a new human resource information system to support modern ways of working.