HJA is curious to explore partnership, in partnership. Bringing together complementary skills, connections, expertise and experience supports high-quality policy and practice relevant research.
We have a small team and research is time and resource consuming, so working on projects with other organisations or academics is a great way to expand our opportunities for learning through research. We partner with others who have shared questions of interest and where our expertise is complementary. These research partnerships help us build evidence about the place and value of health justice partnership.
HJA works across sectors and expertise. In our partnerships HJA brings access to justice expertise into health research, and brings public health perspectives to access to justice practice. Bringing these perspectives together provides a well rounded view of the complex issues and systems that can impact people’s lives.
STAR-CRE: Centre for Research Excellence in Strengths-based, Tiered, Accessible Resources and Supports for Kids
Embedding Legal Support to Improve Child and Family Wellbeing
Families accessing the Carramar Hub often face complex life challenges that extend beyond health alone. These issues, such as tenancy, debt, immigration, child protection, discrimination, crime/victimisation, and social security, are often first raised in trusted health or community settings rather than with lawyers. Health justice partnerships bring legal help directly into health and family services, enabling earlier identification of legal need, warm referral pathways, and more holistic, strengths‑based support for families.
What we did
The research team undertook a legal needs and opportunities assessment to understand:
- the types of unmet legal issues experienced by families attending the hub
- the capability and confidence of practitioners to identify and respond to legal need
- local legal and financial counselling services that could partner with the hub
- the appetite for a sustainable, mutually beneficial Health Justice Partnership
We are currently supporting relationship development among the legal services to facilitate the health justice partnership.
Why this matters
Legal issues are often hidden drivers of stress, instability and poor health outcomes for families. Embedding legal help within a trusted, community‑based hub creates earlier easier pathways to support, reducing crises, strengthening family wellbeing, and enabling practitioners to respond more holistically.
What we found
1. Families experience multiple, intersecting legal issues that affect wellbeing
Families engaging with the Hub often face clustered socio-legal issues rather than single problems. The most common include family violence, family law matters, child protection, debt, housing, and interactions with government systems (e.g. Centrelink, NDIS). These issues frequently compound and escalate, impacting parenting capacity and child outcomes.
2. Significant barriers prevent families from accessing legal help
Families face multiple access barriers, including:
- lack of recognition that problems are “legal”
- fear, shame, and distrust of services
- cost concerns and system complexity
- language barriers and practical constraints (time, childcare)
These barriers are particularly pronounced for culturally and linguistically diverse and refugee communities.
3. Health staff are trusted and well-placed to identify legal needs
Karitane staff have strong, trusted relationships with families, enabling them to identify underlying legal issues early. Trust developed in health settings can be transferred to lawyers, making integrated models effective.
4. Embedding legal help in the Hub (HJP model) would improve access and outcomes
The assessment identifies strong potential for a health justice partnership to:
- make legal help more accessible and familiar
- support staff through training and collaboration
- enable holistic, integrated care
On-site legal services were seen as particularly valuable in overcoming barriers to service access.
Knowledge Translation
With strong networks across the health, legal, and social sectors, Health Justice Australia will support the translation of findings into policy and practice nationally, ensuring that lessons from STAR‑CRE extend beyond the health system to the broader ecosystem shaping child and family wellbeing.
Centre of Research Excellence for Integrated Health and Social Care
This unique platform brings together key stakeholders to enhance integrated health and social care models.
Its purpose is to reduce hospitalisation through innovative, high quality, collaborative research of home and community-based service systems, including the development of digital and virtual modes of community-based service delivery.
Centre of Research Excellence in Childhood Adversity and Mental Health
This centre of research excellence was a five-year research program co-funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and Beyond Blue.
The CRE brought together people with lived experience and their families, service providers, educators, researchers and policy makers from education, health and human services in a concerted effort to prevent the significant mental health morbidity load of depression, anxiety problems and suicidality experienced by children living in adversity and exposed to adverse childhood experiences.
We facilitated the integration of legal help into two co-designed child and family hubs, and the opportunity to learn how this supports the capability of integrated service hubs to help families and children living in adversity.
