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Summary

Consultations for this and other studies indicate that people with a mental illness are likely to be in contact with a range of non-legal service providers for a variety of reasons, including mental health treatment, financial assistance, housing assistance, other welfare assistance and recreation. Consultations for this study also indicate that non-legal services are often the first point of call for disadvantaged people when they have a legal problem and that non-legal service providers often assist their clients with their legal problems and can be important pathways to legal services.

Non-legal services may support clients with a mental illness who have legal issues, first by assisting them to identify that they have a legal problem and by providing them with legal information. They may refer clients to solicitors and accompany them to appointments with solicitors. Non-legal services can assist legal service providers by communicating the client’s situation, including the client’s illness, the effects of medication, their general life circumstances (including how much support they have) and what their current legal issue is. Non-legal service providers may provide support to people through the legal process and also advocate on a client’s behalf to government departments such as Centrelink and DOH and in some cases, before tribunals.

This assistance can be very important in helping clients to overcome the barriers to accessing legal assistance that were raised in Chapter 4. However, consultations for this study suggest that non-legal workers may not always possess the legal knowledge and knowledge of legal assistance required in order to give a client information about a legal issue or refer them onto a lawyer. A few non-legal service providers suggested that it would be useful to be able to access legal advice and information as issues arise. Legal and non-legal service providers also suggested that relationships between non-legal and legal agencies could be further developed to improve gaps in knowledge.

Furthermore, non-legal agencies may not be equipped in terms of resources and availability of staff. The reported crisis in mental health care and constraints on resources may mean that non-legal agencies are not always able to provide support to clients with a mental illness who have a legal problem, or if they can it may need to be of a more limited nature (e.g. a referral to a legal service rather than accompanying the client to the appointment).

In addition, for a number of reasons, some people with a mental illness may not be accessing non-legal services. Again, lack of services as a result of the reported crisis in mental health care, lack of resources, lack of awareness of services and the stigma associated with having a mental illness may be preventing people with a mental illness from accessing non-legal services and agencies. This suggests that some people with a mental illness may be isolated from both legal assistance and non-legal assistance. This creates a major barrier to accessing justice for this group of particularly marginalised people, who could benefit greatly from some form of assistance with their legal problems.