Central Highlands Advocacy Health Alliance – Improving legal, health and wellbeing outcomes for disadvantaged young people
The Health Justice Partnership (HJP) comprises Ballarat Community Health (BCH), the Central Highlands Community Legal Centre (CHCLC) and Federation University Australia. This project was funded by the Victorian Legal Service Board Major Grants in 2014 and has continued to grow throughout 2016.
The HJP has assisted in reducing the impact of legal issues on the health and well-being of disadvantaged young people in the region by providing timely legal assistance and appropriate referral pathways. Of the 105 Young people presenting to the Youth Lawyer in the reporting period there has been a diverse range of issues, including multiple legal problems.
The top ten problem types are as follows:
From the Youth Lawyer....
The New Year saw the 6 month pass on the youth lawyer, health justice partnership project and the near completion of the website STUCK which aims at enabling young people the opportunity to inform themselves of legal issues that are relevant to this cohort and most importantly at a time and place that suits them. The platform allows for both young people to make an appointment with the youth lawyer and also for health practitioners to obtain information of relevance to assist them in their role.
The youth lawyer is based 3 days per week at the Lucas Ballarat Community Health site and is mobile to meet clients at either the Sebastopol or Cooinda Clinic, place of residence or school. Although the original pool of clientele was to be sourced solely within the Community Health Centre itself, it soon became evident that a broader network of youth services should get on board to better service the youth in need. Accordingly referrals began to come in from Uniting Care, Berry Street, Headspace, Secondary schools, Victoria Legal Aid the Central Highlands Community Legal Centre.
The youth lawyer role allowed for more comprehensive casework to be undertaken than a usual community lawyer role entails. It is here that attendances in the Ballarat Magistrates Court for various types of summary criminal matters from drink and drug driving to confiscation of motor vehicle under the hoon legislation. Outstanding infringements soon made itself known as the main legal issue for clients, to which many had escalated to warrant level. The health justice partnership became most evident in these scenarios with many clients experiencing mental health, drug/alcohol dependency and/or homelessness during the time of offending behaviour and therefore grounds for applications of revocation based on special circumstances.
Although the project is nearing its end with its conclusion in December 2016, the community services sector has had its first taste of what the future delivery of health and legal services may look like, whereby both the clinician and lawyer working together can maximise their service to the young person and most importantly have a positive impact on the young person to get their life back on track.