First published in Insight, Victorian Council of Social Service, June 2017
It may sound odd, but across Australia, people who need legal advice are more likely to raise it with a GP, nurse or social worker than with a lawyer.
The reasons for this vary, but include cost, distance and accessibility.1 People may feel it is too hard to access a legal professional, and instead feel more comfortable raising it with a health professional they trust, and who they know they can reach. This is even easier to understand when we consider it’s more often those who are vulnerable and marginalised in our community who are likely to face legal issues, with fines, consumer issues and housing being among them.
That’s why, since 2012, health and legal organisations have been building collaborations called ‘health justice partnerships’.
Providing health care and legal advice
Ritchie was receiving care at Bendigo Community Health Service following a heart attack. He blamed his heart attack on the stress he was under from a guardianship order which, he thought, meant he could no longer do things like make minor repairs in his home. The health service had a lawyer onsite from Loddon-Campaspe Community Legal Centre as part of their health justice partnership. The lawyer helped Ritchie understand the purpose of the order and how to navigate it to get the resources he needed. Ultimately, the lawyer worked with Ritchie to have his guardianship order overturned completely. Ritchie said the support he received from the health justice partnership made him “feel like a human being again” and able to get “back in control” of his affairs and his life.
This exciting innovation builds partnerships between lawyers, health workers and other professionals, to help them identify and respond to the broad range of needs people may present with. It is not about expecting people to do more with less, but instead about supporting professionals’ skills and building capacity across these sectors.
Adding a lawyer to a healthcare team means healthcare professionals can more easily spot a legal problem and have someone nearby who can solve it. And because legal problems can affect health, it means patients receive better, more holistic healthcare too. Working together, health and legal professionals can better identify and respond to people’s needs, helping improve their health – and preventing their existing problems from reaching crisis point.
Health Justice Australia is supporting the expansion and effectiveness of these exciting new collaborations.
We do that through research and evaluation; by developing resources to support practitioners working in partnership; and by connecting our evidence and experience in policy advocacy.
Victoria has played a central role in developing this approach. Research by Victorian community lawyers provided key evidence of improved justice outcomes from these kinds of collaborations.2 This sparked a $2.6 million commitment from the Legal Services Board in 2014 to establish eight new heath justice partnerships across the state.
Health justice partnerships are improving access to legal services that not only meet people’s legal needs but also address the factors that often distract from or undermine people’s health.
Most excitingly, by building the trust and understanding necessary to forge lasting relationships across services, health justice partnerships are part of a system-wide transformation in how our health and human services meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.
Victoria has the largest number of health justice partnerships in the country:1
- In hospital and community health services
- Throughout Melbourne and in regional centres
- Improving responses to family violence
- Helping health workers identify and respond to patients at risk of elder abuse
- Operating in culturally and linguistically diverse communities, with specialist CALD services
- Improving the health and justice outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, in partnership with community controlled organisations
- Meeting legal needs for people on low incomes or experiencing disadvantage, including provision of legal services alongside financial counselling and social work.
References
- Legal Australia Wide survey, Law and Justice Foundation of NSW, 2012.
- See for example P Noble, Advocacy-Health Alliances: Better Health through Medical-Legal Partnership, 2012; and L Gyorki, Breaking down the silos: Overcoming the Practical and Ethical Barriers of Integrating Legal Assistance into a Healthcare Setting, Churchill Fellowship report, 2013.
