15 Jul Building more support for women across Victoria
Just months in to our Family Law Capacity Building Program and participants are already seeing the benefits.
Under the program, Women’s Legal Service Victoria is working with 5 community legal centres from across Victoria to increase women’s access to free legal support after family violence happens.
Principal Solicitor for the Emma House Legal Program Amy Lane says the quality of service that her team provides the community in Victoria’s South West is on the increase.
“I felt that our participation in the program would be timely given our junior workforce, especially in relation to providing high quality representation to clients,” she says.
“Any legal issue related to family violence, our legal service will now try to assist.”
Building confidence, improving service delivery
Amy says the training and development workshops run by Women’s Legal are building the confidence of her staff.
“The chance to receive support from senior lawyers whilst working through scenarios similar to the ones we are faced with on a daily basis is increasing skillsets of junior lawyers and enabling more senior lawyers to build on their mentoring skills.
“Already, my team have reported both an increase in their knowledge base and an increase in their confidence when delivering advice to clients.”
CAPTION: Emma House Principal Solicitor Amy Lane, (left) helped to officially launch the Family Law Capacity Building program alongside Women’s Legal CEO Claudia Fatone and the Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, KC.
Amy’s team faces huge demand for legal assistance.
Emma House Legal Program is the only community legal centre in Victoria’s South West. It is based in Warrnambool, more than 2 hours away from the next closest community legal centres in Geelong and Ballarat.
“We would love to grow to provide in-person advice to some of the most vulnerable and isolated women in our state in areas such as Casterton, Coleraine, Heywood, Camperdown and Terang.”
The Emma House team is one of 5 legal centres participating in the Family Law Capacity Building Program. Lawyers from Moonee Valley Legal Service, ARC Justice, InTouch Multicultral Centre Against Family Violence and Whittlesea Community Connections are also taking part.
Working in partnership
A key component of the program is to encourage collaborative practice across the participating legal services. For Amy, this is “incredibly valuable”
“To network with other lawyers who are doing the same work as us and dealing with similar challenges, especially given that we are often unable to get to events in the city.
“We are now very much looking forward to the next stages of the program, where there will be an increased focus on skills-building, starting with legal advice, working through file management and then ultimately progressing to providing high level family law litigation services.
“I am confident that our participation (in this program) will allow us to continue to build the sustainable family violence and family law litigation practice that the South West community desperately needs,” Amy says.
The Family Law Capacity Building Program is building high-quality family law services at:
- InTouch Multicultural Centre against Family Violence, a statewide service supporting migrant and refugee women
- ARC Justice, which supports communities across Central and Northern Victoria
- Moonee Valley Legal Service
- The Sexual Assault & Family Violence Centre and Emma House Legal Program, which supports women across Southwest Victoria
- Whittlesea Community Connections
CAPTION: Lawyers from participating community legal services join the Women’s Legal team to officially launch the Family Law Capacity Building Program.
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