Child protection lawyers play a crucial role in helping vulnerable parents and children.
Our 2017 Child Protection Legal Aid Services Review included a commitment that we would take a more active role in supporting child protection lawyers, through coordinating professional education and developing resources and tools to assist lawyers doing this complex and important work.
To realise this commitment, we are excited to be commencing a project to develop new child protection professional development training and resources.
First step – review and consultation
The first stage of the project is to understand what child protection lawyers see as the important skills and knowledge for this specialist area of law, and what training and resources would support them best. We will also be reviewing existing training resources to have a complete picture of what’s available and what the gaps are.
As part of this step, we will shortly commence a consultation process with child protection lawyers, to ensure that the training program addresses the needs of those working to assist parents and children day-to-day. We will also be speaking to people with lived experience of child protection, and other professionals with expertise relevant to child protection.
Are you a child protection lawyer? We would love to hear from you!
The project team is keen to speak with a broad range of lawyers working in the child protection jurisdiction, including:
- lawyers who have recently started practising in this area, and those with many years of experience
- metropolitan, regional and rural lawyers
- sole practitioners, members of private firms, community legal centre and Aboriginal legal service lawyers.
What you would be involved in
Initial consultations will be conducted either by phone or online conference (around 45 minutes).
The first round of consultations will start this month and continue through June. Later in the year, there will be further opportunities to participate in consultation on the development of new training content.
Contact
To get involved, or to find out more, please email our Education Project Coordinator, Allyson Foster via allyson.foster@vla.vic.gov.au
Reviewed 16 May 2023