Dividing Walls

Dividing Walls forms part of ongoing research by the PILCH Homeless Persons' Legal Clinic (HPLC) into the legal and non legal needs of women and accompanying children.

Through our outreach based casework services we provide women and their children with legal assistance to avoid eviction into homelessness and resolve debilitating fines and infringements. In addition, however, the HPLC continues to come into contact with women experiencing (or at risk of) homelessness who require assistance with family law, family violence and child protection matters.

Given these legal needs, we undertook the HPLC Families Project to examine the current legal services being provided to women (and their accompanying children) who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness to determine whether the existing services were adequate and accessible to this vulnerable group.

Findings

Despite the significant importance of legal assistance in the areas of family law, family violence and child protection, this report demonstrates that funding constraints have resulted in some key challenges for women seeking assistance in these areas, including:

  • difficulty accessing ongoing legal assistance;
  • limited capacity to assist women with certain complex legal issues;
  • shortages of duty lawyer services (particularly at circuit listings in regional areas); and
  • few services practicing across all areas of family law, family violence and child protection.

Recommendations                                           

Dividing Walls demonstrates that a number of initiatives would have a significant impact on women seeking legal assistance and calls for increased funding to:

  • operate duty lawyer services at regional courts;
  • expand existing legal services to provide support in contested matters and ongoing legal assistance;
  • expand legal service capacity to assist with child protection matters;
  • deliver training, education and access to specialist support in order to build the capacity of existing services to practice across family law, family violence and child protection jurisdictions; and
  • facilitate skills transfer and relationship building between legal and non-legal services.

This report provides a strong argument for increased funding across the areas of family law, family violence and child protection. If implemented these recommendations will, without doubt, improve outcomes for extremely disadvantaged women and their children.