Despite the tragic loss of life, Australia’s public health response to Covid19 appears to have managed the first wave of infection as well as could be hoped for. But many people in Australia are now bracing for the indirect impacts that will result from the pandemic and the necessary measures that have been taken to contain the spread of the virus. People who are vulnerable to unmet legal need and its impact on their health are likely to be hit first and worst by both the direct impacts of the virus itself, and also by its indirect impacts on their legal and social wellbeing.
This includes people at risk of or vulnerable to family violence, elder abuse or child protection concerns; people living in unhygienic or insecure housing; and people for whom loss of employment or inability to get paid work makes them vulnerable to poverty. People often don’t think of legal help as a solution to everyday problems, but legal assistance services are available to help people with issues like poor quality housing, credit and debt issues, employment, family breakdown or family violence.
Where health justice partnership fits in
Health justice partnership is another avenue people can access legal help, through the healthcare teams and settings they are already in touch with. Health justice partnership also enables legal practitioners to provide backup or secondary consultation to healthcare workers, who are often the frontline in identifying in their patients a range of legal or social concerns, which go beyond medical matters.
Recognising this, Health Justice Australia has this week written to all attorneys-general at the federal, state and territory level, to recommend principles for the distribution of the Federal Government’s initial investment of $63.3 to support legal assistance in response to Covid19.
Our recommendations
These recommendations are informed by Health Justice Australia’s work as the national centre of excellence for health justice partnership, supporting collaboration between health and legal services to tackle the legal problems in people’s lives that effect their health. In this role we have convened the Covid19 Legal Assistance Working Group, a coalition of national peak bodies and services providing publicly-funded legal assistance who have been working together to identify the areas of acute legal need most likely to emerge during the current pandemic. Read more about the Covid19 Working Legal Group here.
Recommendation 1
Allocation of funding should be directed to ensuring access to legal assistance by those for whom Covid19 presents a barrier to getting the help they need. This includes recognition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been hit particularly hard by Covid19 and that Aboriginal community controlled legal services have experienced a consequent increase in demand.
Recommendation 2
Funding decisions should include resourcing to test and learn from what works for whom in addressing legal need in times of crisis. While this funding has been provided in the specific context of Covid19, it follows the bushfire crisis over the 2019-2020 summer. If this funding supports legal assistance sector innovation and allows the sector to learn what works in responding to legal need borne of crisis, that could have a significant impact in improving the legal assistance sector’s preparedness to respond to crises in the future. This might mean that funding supports innovation in trialling new approaches or taking existing approaches in new directions; and that learning from those innovation is a valued and funded part of the process. Such a commitment would also contribute to the Government’s commitment to improving the measurement of outcomes across legal assistance broadly.
Recommendation 3
Funding should be distributed with a commitment to supporting collaboration, where opportunities exist to share, pool or scale up funding, whether among priority client groups or across services. For instance, through collaborative models like health justice partnership that connect health and legal services around the multiple problems in people’s lives. Or through the opportunity to pool funding to improve IT infrastructure across networks of services could see far greater gain for the dollars provided, than if funds are spread thinly over individual service projects.
We hope these recommendations support good decision-making about this funding in the interests access to legal help for those who are most likely to need it at this time.
