Release date: 11 September 2024
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.
Due to commence in July 2025, this new agreement delivers funding for frontline legal assistance services including community legal centres, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, legal aid commissions, and family violence prevention and legal services.
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.
This funding was announced in the context of the national crisis of gender-based violence. Many of the complex problems that legal assistance services help people with, like domestic and family violence, credit and debt, fines, social security, insecure housing and discrimination, have negative effects on people’s health and wellbeing. When people don’t have adequate access to legal assistance, these problems often continue to escalate until they reach crisis point costing the individual, their family and the community much more
As broader socio-economic conditions contribute to an increase in legal need, legal assistance services are having to turn away clients who are often in positions of real crisis. This in turn has detrimental effects on the health, safety and wellbeing of individuals and families.
Health and social sector leaders have been urging the government to increase investment in legal assistance funding. Last week, Health Justice Australia sent a letter co-signed by more than 25 leaders from across the sectors to federal health and social services ministers outlining the important role that legal assistance plays in improving health and wellbeing outcomes through person-centred, integrated care that seeks to address the complexity of intersecting issues in people’s lives.
Health Justice Australia CEO Sheree Limbrick says: “Legal assistance is an essential tool in preventing crisis in people’s lives. A well-funded sector means that people can access the help they need when and where they need it, before they reach a crisis point. It is essential we fund services so they can provide timely intervention to deal with problems before they escalate.
“The government’s recent funding announcement is a welcome first step in addressing access to justice, but there is much more work to be done.”
Contact us for comment on the National Access to Justice Partnership
For comment, contact Stephanie Colls, Communications Manager. Call 02 8526 0869 or email stephanie.colls@healthjustice.org.au
About Health Justice Australia
Health Justice Australia is a national charity and centre of excellence supporting the effectiveness and expansion of health justice partnerships through:
Knowledge and its translation: developing evidence and translating that evidence into knowledge that is valued by practitioners, researchers, policy-makers and funders.
Building capability: supporting practitioners to work collaboratively, including through brokering, mentoring and facilitating partnerships.
Driving systems change: connecting the experience of people coming through health justice partnerships, and their practitioners, with opportunities for lasting systems change through reforms to policy settings, service design and funding.
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