Filling The Void: Community Legal Advice

The City of Bendigo is in the Loddon Campaspe region in Victoria. It was found to be the most disadvantaged local government area in rural and regional Victoria. (Jesuit Social Service 2004).

Reichstein Foundation were approached in 2003 by a family violence service in Bendigo to provide the funds to employ a lawyer as the service regularly found that whilst intervention orders were easily obtained, police were not acting on breaches of these orders. Women did not have the funds to pay for legal advice and whilst some private law firms took on ‘pro bono’ cases it was at their discretion to select those most worthy.

Reichstein Foundation met with the service and discussed ways of tackling the ‘root cause’ of the issue, which in this case was police inaction but also the lack of a community legal Centre. These Centres provide free legal advice and representation, casework, community education and undertake law reform on local issues.

Funding over three years was provided to enable the service to:

  1. Establish an alliance of services and community members to see how the issue affected others. This process found the lack of legal advice and representation resulted in tenants having higher eviction rates, people with a psychiatric illness along with low income residents having higher than average imprisonment rates.
  2. Undertake research. A report was produced which provided evidence that Bendigo was the only regional town without a legal centre and demonstrated through case studies the negative impact and discrimination this resulted in.
  3. Educate the community. The information and case studies were used to highlight the issue in the media, newsletters and community education talks.
  4. Skill up Community. Training was provided to help understand the issue and feel confident in talking to their local MP’s, Legal Aid, Attorney General’s Dept, etc. Letter writing workshops were held along with media training.

In July 2005 ongoing State Government funding was provided to establish the Loddon Campaspe Community Legal Centre. The funding allows for two full time lawyers, a community education worker and administrative staff. Its first community education project was to tackle the police inaction around breaches on intervention orders!