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Why a wellbeing budget is the time to build and scale up health justice partnerships

This year, the Australian Government will introduce a ‘wellbeing budget’. This year it will also be working on several key national strategies, including on violence against women and children, the abuse of older Australians, the national legal assistance partnership, and preventive health. Each of these strategies recognises the multiple, intersecting health, legal and social needs that hold people in disadvantage.

The signs are clear – the time is right for a significant expansion of health justice partnership.

What, you might ask, does any of this have to do with health justice partnership? First, let’s take the wellbeing budget, first flagged in last year’s October budget. The idea is that, rather than telling us just where the money is being spent, a wellbeing budget will look to tell us how the money that is being spent will improve the wellbeing of everyone in Australia. As we’ve explored previously, wellbeing is a shared goal that can cut across silos, recognising the intersectionality in people’s lives and the complex ways in which health, legal and social problems intersect. It is also a goal that matters to people: it puts people at the centre of the services funded by government.

A wellbeing agenda offers the opportunity to recognise that, just as people’s challenges intersect, so too must their solutions. This insight is reflected in the direction of multiple national strategies, with their focus on person-centred services and collaboration between services and across systems. And it is reflected in the purpose and design of health justice partnership.

The Australian Government has already funded several health justice partnerships to respond to violence against women and children and the abuse of older Australians. Several reports, including the National Plan Stakeholder Consultation and an inquiry in support for older Victorians from migrant and refugee backgrounds, have emphasised the value of these partnerships, saying that they demonstrate ‘what it really looks like to transform service responses’.

As the Victorian inquiry recognised, however, the scale of these partnerships doesn’t come close to meeting the need. There’s a golden opportunity here for the Australian Government. While there are more than 100 health justice partnerships across Australia, the Australian Government directly funds less than 10% of these partnerships. There are opportunities to invest in existing partnerships, both by scaling up those already funded by the Australian Government, and by investing in existing partnerships without government funding.

Scaling up health justice partnership

There’s also strong national interest in expanding health justice partnership beyond Victoria and New South Wales. For example, last November we partnered in a symposium on health justice partnerships in Western Australia that was over-subscribed, demonstrating the desire of services to work together. As Health Justice Australia’s 2023-24 federal budget submission to the Australian Government has put it, there’s a great case for doubling the numbers of health justice partnerships to improve the safety of women and children, and older people, as the new National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children begins to be translated into action and as the government prepares for the next National Plan to Respond to the Abuse of Older Australians and the next National Legal Assistance Partnership agreement.

We also see huge opportunity to integrate legal help in the government’s Head to Health sites, beginning with building capacity to collaborate within those sites and identifying their legal needs. This would build on work we have already done with Neami National, and would recognise how legal need intersects with, and compounds, mental health challenges.

Investing in preventive health

Scaling up health justice partnership can also be seen as an investment in preventive health. The National Preventive Health Strategy recognises the ‘close relationship between people’s health and the circumstances in which people grow, live, work, play and age’, but we’re yet to see action on some of the major commitments in this strategy. We hope that this year, the health prevention and promotion fund promised in the strategy will be established. We also call on the government to ensure that this funding is open to those beyond the healthcare sector, as a critical mechanism to begin tackling these wider determinants of health.

For the Australian Government, investing in health justice partnerships is a smart choice. They are already proving effective, can readily be scaled up at a reasonable cost, and can help respond to many complex intersecting challenges. In this policy climate, in particular, they are concrete actions that fit well with multiple national strategies, and that fit well with the premise and promise of a wellbeing budget – that the wellbeing of Australians can best be ensured when policy frameworks and service delivery work better together, with each other and with the communities they support.

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Our budget proposals are designed to improve health, justice and wellbeing outcomes of individuals and families facing complex health, social and legal need.

Find out what’s in HJA’s 2023-24 pre-Budget submission.

Submission