As we head into a new term of parliament, we need bold political leadership.
Many individuals and families in our community are facing complex health, social and justice issues that can have lifelong, intergenerational impact on health and wellbeing.
The challenges are significant: cost of living pressures, housing insecurity, increasing poverty, persistent gender inequality and gender-based violence, and increased risk from natural disaster and pandemics. Efforts and investment towards Closing the Gap are failing to improve outcomes for First Nations peoples.
Services are struggling to meet increasing demand for support and individual service approaches do not alone have the capacity to respond to the complex challenges people are facing.
As we head into a new term of parliament, we need:
- bold political leadership to transform the systems that hold people in disadvantage. This must be underpinned by a resolute commitment to First Nations self-determination
- strong, equitable and responsive support for individuals and families in times of need
- decisive and long-term government commitment to, and investment in, prevention and early intervention systems that can effectively respond to complexity.
We call on our government to:
1. Ensure strong, equitable and innovative services which respond to multiple government priorities.
- Commit to long-term funding for preventative, integrated, multi-disciplinary, person-centred services, that respond to the social determinants affecting the health and wellbeing of individuals and their families.
- Deliver more substantial investment into the legal assistance sector to support an increase in integrated service delivery, and to address continued funding shortfalls in the face of increasing need.
- Invest in workforce training and capability building to support collaborative multi-disciplinary practice.
2. Deliver resourcing to achieve First Nations self-determination.
- Recognise and resource ACCO leadership
- Invest in the ACCO sector and continue community-led transition of policy and service leadership.
3. Invest in prevention and early intervention and the wider determinants of health.
- Harness the commitment in the National Preventive Health Strategy with a clear roadmap to deliver the promised 5% of total health expenditure on preventive health measures by 2030.
- Raise the rate of JobSeeker and related payments.
Health justice partnership as a solution.
Health justice partnership is one example of a collaborative integrated approach that improves service responses to complexity. It is a response to the research that one in five of the most disadvantaged in our community take no action in response to legal problems; and when people do seek advice, they are more likely to ask a non-legal advisor, such as a health professional, than a lawyer.
In health justice partnership, legal help is brought into healthcare and other social support settings, enabling lawyers to work more closely with the patient/client and treating team to address legal issues that are interacting with a client’s health, wellbeing and treatment.
There are over 130 HJPs nationally, in every jurisdiction across Australia. Settings include community health services, ante-natal care settings, child and family services, mental health and wellbeing centres, domestic, family and sexual violence response services, alcohol or other drug services, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services and hospitals.
Organisations with active Health Justice Partnerships include:
The evidence
The value of integrated service responses at the right time, in the right place
Since the World Health Organization’s ground-breaking Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008), evidence has continued to grow about how social and environmental factors make or keep people unwell.
These social determinants include wide ranging legal issues related to areas such as housing, unemployment, discrimination, credit and debt and violence. When left unaddressed, these issues can intensify or escalate to crisis, exacerbate disadvantage and lead to poorer health and wellbeing outcomes, both physical and mental.
The legal sector needs more investment to:
Meet needs
Despite recent funding commitments through the new National Access to Justice Partnership, the legal assistance sector will need substantially more investment to meet increasing community need.
Enable services
More investment is also needed to enable services to pursue integrated, collaborative service approaches, such as health justice partnership.
Deliver priority reforms
Investment must be consistent with Government policy directions in other portfolios to deliver against Closing the Gap priority reforms.
System transformation
Current service design and funding systems across the legal, health and social sectors are not well set up to address the complexity that individuals and families experience in everyday life.
The next term of parliament is an opportunity for stronger cross-government collaboration to transform the way systems are designed and funded, so that services are better enabled to respond to intersecting and complex challenges, that span multiple priority reform areas.
Integrated service approaches build the capacity of the service systems to respond to complex need. However, working in integrated practice takes specific skills and competencies that may not be supported in professional training pathways. The government needs to invest in workforce development to build capability across sectors for collaborative multi-disciplinary practice.
The next term of parliament is an opportunity for stronger cross-government collaboration to transform the way systems are designed and funded, so that services are better enabled to respond to intersecting and complex challenges, that span multiple priority reform areas.
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