Health justice in the news
Media release: Adequate legal assistance funding is vital to improving health and wellbeing outcomes
Health Justice Australia has welcomed last week’s announcement that the Australian Government will provide $3.9 billion in funding to the legal assistance sector through the new National Access to Justice Partnership. While this announcement is an encouraging first step in addressing the chronic underfunding of the sector, there is still much to do to ensure the sustainability of legal assistance services so they can continue to support the health and wellbeing of individuals and families.
Media contact
For media-related questions, please contact Stephanie Colls, Communications Manager.
Call 02 8526 0869 or email healthjustice@healthjustice.org.au.
About Health Justice Australia
We help health, legal and social services work together to better support people with complex and intersecting needs.
Health Justice Australia was formed in 2016 to support health justice partnership, a practitioner-led movement that saw community lawyers moving out of their offices and into the most unlikely of places – hospitals and community health settings. Here, they collaborate with health services and their patients to address legal problems that were harming their health. Problems like poor quality housing, family violence and mental ill-health.
Health Justice Australia was established to learn from services working collaboratively and to share those lessons with other service providers, policy makers and funders. Health justice partnerships are busy on the ground doing great work, but there are many system barriers that limit their expansion and effectiveness. We understand and amplify the innovations made by individual health justice partnerships and translate those lessons into system-level solutions that respond to complexity in people’s lives.
What we do
We’re connecting the evidence, expertise and experiences of a diverse range of professionals, researchers and communities to explore partnership to address inequities in health and justice.
We work to build the confidence, skills and readiness of health and justice practitioners, advocates and leaders to work together towards better outcomes for their patients and clients.
We’re working towards lasting systems change through strategic advocacy toward reforms in policy settings, service design and funding.
