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Ch 5. Barriers to accessing legal assistance
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Because you’ve already fallen outside the boundaries of most support services there are two things here. One is the lack of knowledge of information. If you don’t have a fixed home address and your life is transient, you don’t know about support services. You do not know about legal services. You do not know about free medical services. You don’t know anything about the way the world works. Because your life suddenly starts to become a circle of wake up, put your face on, dread the night, go out, do what you’ve got to do, come home, pound yourself with drugs or alcohol or some sort of substance, and then crash out and then get up and do it again. There is no forethought, no planning, no availability to move outside that boundary when you’re there.1
As illustrated in Chapter 4, homeless people in NSW tend to face multiple legal issues as they move through homelessness. Prominent among these are eviction, housing debt and blacklisting, family law, domestic violence issues and other crime, debt and income related issues. For many homeless people, legal problems are intertwined with social issues.
Homeless people face a variety of barriers in accessing legal assistance. Some barriers relate to their circumstances, such as limited resources to spend pursuing a legal issue and competing immediate priorities. More systemic barriers include the complexity and formality of the law and the limited resources available to support the range and extent of legal need among disadvantaged people in NSW.
This chapter discusses the barriers homeless people face in identifying and seeking support for their legal issues.
The barriers to homeless people seeking legal assistance
The homeless people consulted for this project described the efforts they make to address issues that arise in their lives. These included going to the Centrelink office to sort out a payment problem, finding accommodation or visiting Legal Aid to get legal advice or assistance.
However, people experiencing homelessness are confronted by a range of barriers to resolving legal issues and finding pathways out of their homelessness. As one legal service provider stated some clients might have their accommodation sorted but find everything else has fallen apart (e.g. the electricity has been cut off, they can’t afford clothing or food, etc.).2 While the barriers faced and the capacity to deal with these obstacles vary considerably from person to person, some prevailing themes have been identified.
Having other priorities
A point consistently raised in this study was that unless there was a legal crisis (e.g. imminent eviction, an acute episode of domestic violence or arrest by police), legal needs were simply less of a priority for people when homeless than other immediate needs. For men, women, young people and families experiencing homelessness, other priorities included getting accommodation, earning an income, looking after family, satisfying an addiction or getting medical attention.3 Caseworkers observed:
When families are in crisis, there is just too much to deal with. Legal issues fall to the bottom of the list. The legal issues may become more relevant—able to be faced—when people have stabilised to some extent.4
Men that come out of prison have a lot of non-legal issues to deal with: accommodation, food, getting their gear back, furnishing a home, sorting out relationships, then legal issues. Legal issues are not, therefore, something that they are able to deal with.5
For many of the young people that we deal with, a legal issue becomes very often an issue that is too hard to understand because they’ve got other huge issues happening often at their age, with family, with drug issues, those sorts of things.6
Tenancy workers described clients who were too preoccupied with finding alternative accommodation to fight eviction.7 As a result of being preoccupied with other priorities legal issues do not get dealt with, and may accumulate and compound.
Feeling overwhelmed by the issues
A homeless lifestyle not only reduces the amount of time people have to address complex legal needs, but also people’s emotional capacity to do so. As one woman stated:
I am sick of turning up to places run down and filthy dirty, sick from not eating, I just don’t have the energy to do it. I want to help myself but I don’t have the energy to help myself. I need somewhere I can settle in for a week and put my affairs in order.8
An experienced SAAP manager described this as leading to a ‘paralysis of indecision’, where, faced with the need to take actions, the person can become too frightened or overwhelmed to do anything at all.9
Inner-city outreach services talked about a number of homeless people who ‘keep running away from the issues’, even when there were solutions available.10 Homeless participants expressed sentiments such as “I was under a bit of stress and I thought that I didn’t want to add to that and I just wanted to put the whole thing behind me.”11 Another said:
If you’ve been raped on the street one night, your concern is getting home to bed. Your concern is getting whatever fix it is that you can take to get your mind off what’s happened to you. It’s not about going rehashing it with a police officer or with Legal Aid, or with a hospital.12
Consultations suggest that some homeless people ‘resolved’ issues by simply ‘moving on’. In the words of one participant:
To save confrontation I just move out and start again. It’s just easier to move on. In 22 years I couldn’t count all the addresses I’ve had.13
Again, legal issues tend to remain unaddressed in such circumstances.
Reluctance to ‘complicate’ issues
Some participants in this study also felt reluctant to further ‘complicate the situation’. This was particularly apparent in family law and domestic violence matters. One young man who wanted contact with his two-year-old daughter, had not spoken to a lawyer. He said:
I want to, but I don’t want to cause trouble between me and my ex.14
A young woman in a regional location spoke about a man who had been making threatening phone calls and following her. She said:
I was thinking of getting an AVO but it might cause more trouble.15
Previous research into domestic violence and homelessness has also noted a fear of further ‘worsening’ situations by acting on legal advice to leave violent situations or have an AVO taken out.16
Cost of legal services
While some solicitors provide legal advice in the first consultation for free, the costs of engaging a private solicitor are generally well beyond the means of homeless people. Even in personal injury matters, where a lawyer may work on a ‘no-win, no-fees’ basis, the client may have to pay disbursements (e.g. filing fees, photocopying, expert reports). The client also risks paying the other side’s legal fees if they lose the case.
Realistically, because of their very limited or non-existent financial capacity, homeless people are reliant upon subsidised or free legal assistance services, such as legal aid, LawAccess, CLCs, pro-bono legal clinics and services or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (commonly known in NSW as Aboriginal Legal Services (ALSs). However, as discussed below, homeless people may even face barriers accessing these services.
Isolation from services
Legal Aid offices, CLCs and ALSs are located in city, suburban and regional centres in NSW, while most specialist legal services for homeless people are located in inner-city Sydney.17 However, for homeless people, access to these services is made more difficult by a lack of access to transport, particularly in rural and regional NSW.18 In some areas there is no public transport at all. In other areas, public transport may be available, but people cannot afford to use it. As one rural CLC lawyer observed:
Some homeless people who cannot obtain emergency shelter or accommodation in a regional town will try and secure accommodation with a friend, who may live some distance out of town. The poor availability of public transport and the expense of existing transport options make it difficult for these people to come into town to access services, including Centrelink, and accommodation services.19
Further, as mentioned in Chapter 4, homeless people using public transport without tickets risk being fined, and going (further) into debt.
Lack of access to transport (which is independent of the violent partner) has also been identified as an issue for women, particularly in rural or regional areas, seeking to leave or address domestic violence.20
Lack of stable accommodation
I think they sent me a letter here—but I didn’t know where to get it… If I knew, I would have seen them about it and they would not have cut my money.21
A lack of stable housing usually involves a lack of or limited access to private telephone use, no consistent telephone number for people to return calls to, limited internet access,22 no one place to safely keep documents, including documents establishing identity, no fixed address to receive mail23 and a reduced likelihood of being granted bail.24 Some homeless people use mobile phones to keep in contact with others. However, as reported in Chapter 4, this can lead to people accumulating debt they cannot service. Homeless people living in rural areas may not even have the option of using a mobile phone because there is no signal coverage.25
For street-based homeless people, a lack of accommodation may extend to having no place to regularly shower and wash clothes. Service providers reported that some people avoided legal services, as they felt ashamed of the visible state of their homelessness. They had not washed and did not have clothing which they felt was appropriate to wear to a legal service or to go to court.26 One participant reflected:
… if I see a hobo walking past that looks filthy dirty, I won’t be saying ‘doesn’t he look dirty’ because now I’ve been there, I know what it’s like. Just because there is nowhere to have a shower.27
Lack of alternative accommodation
A key barrier to people in marginal accommodation (particularly boarders and lodgers and marginal residents of caravan parks) accessing legal or tenancy support is the fear of losing the only accommodation available to them. There appears to be legitimate grounds for such fears. As discussed in Chapter 4, boarders and lodgers do not have the legal protection of being a ‘tenant’. The legal protection afforded to the marginal residents of caravan parks can be equally dubious. In both cases, people are reported to take no action when they have legitimate complaints about their accommodation (e.g. necessary repairs are not made), as they have literally nowhere else to go if they are evicted. As the following case study indicates, eviction following a complaint is a risk, irrespective of whether the complaint being made is justified.
A family with five children had been in a caravan park in a rural town for three months where the father was looking for work, after his job on a property finished. The family did not have the money for the bond or furniture to move to a house. The caravan which they were living in leaked, the door didn’t lock and the park facilities were not maintained properly, so the father complained to the park manager and requested that the leaks be fixed. Following a visit to the park by the local tenant’s advice service and the Park and Village Service, the father learned he should put his concerns in writing and had the right to take the park owner to the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal if repairs were not completed. On receiving the letter the park owner promptly gave the family an eviction notice. Although the family were initially prepared to take the matter to the tribunal they decided against it as they felt it would make it difficult to get accommodation elsewhere in the town if they had a reputation as trouble makers.28
The reluctance of caravan park residents to make complaints about conditions to park owners was compounded in rural areas. Here, residents felt that being branded as a ‘troublemaker’ would not only jeopardise their accommodation, but their capacity to gain employment in the area. As PAVS observed, networks in rural towns are tight. Residents realise this and are hesitant to take action about substandard accommodation or unjustified eviction.29
Lack of alternative and appropriate accommodation was also described as a significant barrier to women wanting to leave domestic violence situations and obtain legal protection. Both emergency accommodation and/or alternative long term housing for women and children are in short supply, particularly in rural and regional areas.30 The accessibility of families to some refuges is further limited by rules which mean that male children aged over 12 years cannot be accommodated.31
Transience/lack of networks
As discussed in Chapter 3, a common feature of homelessness is mobility, that is, mobility between different accommodation, in and out of local areas and between states. A barrier to transient homeless people accessing legal services is their being unfamiliar with local services and having little opportunity to establish support networks in each location. Having examined the needs of families living in residential parks, Eddy described the impact of transience on families:
For families living in caravan parks support and access to information are two significant needs. The majority of families who move, remove themselves from any support networks they have developed. The Caravan Project (Hunter) of the Family Action Centre has recognised that the effects of a transient lifestyle can be evident many years after they have stopped moving. Families who fail to develop a support network manifest their isolation and fail to access community services.32
Feeling intimidated by the legal system
The legal environment is, and is perceived to be, formal and complex. A consistent theme in the consultations for this study was that many felt intimidated by the legal system, including some legal assistance services.33 The LCRC noted that “clients will often delay coming to seek advice generally because of a fear of the system and how it operates”.34 One participant observed:
I suppose I haven’t really understood the legal system, and I sort of drifted in that time I was homeless. It’s also the fear that they are not going to take you seriously, and when you are in that state of mind its hard to go and get someone to talk to you about it.35
A service provider noted:
…as other people have said, … going to [legal services] is really intimidating for these guys. And I guess it’s that intimidation from the system that is one of the biggest barriers that people face that we see.36
It is not just courts and other legal processes that homeless people can find formal and intimidating, but also legal services. Workers reported that homeless people were less likely to visit legal offices in formal business districts, and can feel intimidated by the premises, the language used and the requirements to provide and complete documentation.37 Homeless people can also have difficulties keeping an appointment to see a lawyer in their office. It is noteworthy that these structural barriers to homeless people accessing legal services are similar to those reported to keep Aboriginal people from accessing legal assistance.38
Low literacy and education
The heavy reliance of the legal system on documentation and the complexity of legal language were noted as barriers to homeless people accessing legal services. This is particularly problematic, given the relatively low levels of literacy and education among homeless people39 and the tendency of people to want to conceal their difficulties in reading or understanding written material. One service provider indicated:
… the clients have no problem telling me about their criminal history, they have no problem telling me about their drug and alcohol issues but the thing they find most shameful, and they will barely whisper it to me, is the fact that they can’t read and write. They will do anything to cover up the fact and even ignore things that lead them into jail rather than ask for assistance, because of that shame factor.40
The consultations also indicated that some clients had difficulty understanding legal information and advice given orally: it was not just an issue of literacy, but comprehension.41 Some workers spoke of clients coming from meetings with solicitors to seek clarification about what they had just been told:
… they are so stressed out and they are trying so hard to keep it cool, ‘this ain’t affecting me one bit’ … and after a couple of hours they will come to me and say, ‘What did he say?’ It is not only the fact that they can’t read but the comprehension levels some times too, especially when with high stress levels, you do not comprehend as much as at other times … So everything you are telling them is going in one ear and out the other. They are saying, ‘Yep, understand it, yep, not a problem.’ But you know they are not taking anything in.42
Disability, poor health and addiction
Mental health, alcohol and drug issues, dual diagnosis (mental health and alcohol and drug issues), poor physical health and other complex needs are prevalent among the homeless population, particularly among those entrenched in homelessness.43 As discussed in Chapter 3, people with these complex needs experience a range of symptoms that can impair their capacity to identify their legal issues, obtain assistance and to comprehend verbal and written information provided.44 For instance, speaking of poor mental health, Parker et al. suggest:
Its various symptoms of paranoia, anxiety, depression, delusions, hallucinations and disordered thoughts may fundamentally affect a person’s organisational skills, their relationships with family, flatmates and neighbours, employment opportunities and their ability to maintain tenancy.45
Some participants in this project spoke of the numbing effect of depression on their capacity to seek assistance. One interviewee said:
… when you are in a boarding house you are usually very depressed because you have no money and especially when you are in a lifestyle that promotes depression, it sort of makes it hard to even want to access services.46
Another interviewee commented:
In the two times I was homeless, it was after bashings. One rape and bashing and one bashing. When you go through something like that it’s very emotional. It’s a very trying time for yourself. You’ve got to deal with that yourself. And from that, you let things slide. You let your rent slide, you let your friends slide, you let your work commitments slide, and it can be very depressing.47
The capacity of some homeless people to address legal issues may also be reduced by intellectual disability, intoxication or acquired brain injury. A manager in an inner-city hostel noted:
I would say 80 or 90 per cent of our clientele have got some degree of cognitive impairment. Now that could be because they’re presently affected by a substance or they may have brain damage from years of substance abuse … most of them would have the greatest difficulty filling out your average Legal Aid form or even filling out forms for Centrelink. So … the majority of them need assistance with those basic things.48
Alcohol and other drug dependence raise a number of barriers for homeless people with legal issues. For instance, one interviewee described how the need to satisfy an addiction can override all other priorities:
Problem is, I’m a prostitute, my issue for the day is to make money to support my drug habit. Regardless that I got bashed and raped last night. I’ve got a fix I’ve got to have. The fix is more important than anything else you’ll go through. Before you know it, you go numb, you don’t feel the pain from the rape or the bashing any more. What’s important is to keep working, to keep paying your rent, to keep up your drug habit, and to keep up the clothes you have on your back.49
Once intoxicated, a person’s motivation is generally further reduced:
I do the same thing every day … Get stoned! I have a smoke. I get up of a morning and have … a cup of tea or a cup of coffee of a morning then I have a smoke. And we sit down and we chat. I have a sleep or come up here and have a rest of an afternoon.50
A group of service providers in regional NSW described the impact of memory loss among their homeless clients with a dual diagnosis, with clients forgetting appointments, court dates and the like.51 One homeless participant with mental health issues talked about the role of alcohol and other drugs in his day-to-day life:
Sobriety, straightness, whatever you want to call it, … reality, it was too much. All reality, the past, was all coming back to me. That’s what I was doing. I was hiding everything behind the drugs and alcohol. I’ve been on mental health services for about the last six years … The last six years have been really bad. I’m just not dealing with stuff. It was so much easier before … just go and have a snort and everything’s fine.52
In the public consultations for the first stage of the Law and Justice Foundation’s Access to Justice Program, the comment was made that people who are both drug-dependent and suffering a mental illness often fall through the ‘gaps’ between specialist health services because drug assistance services cannot support people with mental health issues and vice versa.53 People who cannot get support to address their mental health and/or alcohol and drug issues risk remaining isolated from legal support by the symptoms of their illness and dependence.
Lack of awareness of rights
Consultations with homeless people and service providers for this study suggested that many homeless people are not aware of their legal rights. While it could be argued that many in the general population are also unaware of their legal rights, this can be exacerbated for homeless people due to their marginalisation and isolation. A rural service provider observed:
Many would just assume that there is nothing they can do, or wouldn’t even see that there is a problem or that they have rights.54
The impact of this as a barrier to justice was described by the VPILCH HPLC:
A person’s ability to access legal services or court or tribunal systems is contingent, at least in part, on that person being aware that they have a ‘legal problem’ or that they have ‘legal rights’ that are being infringed. Lack of awareness of legal rights, and a lack of understanding about ‘the law’, is a significant barrier to many homeless people accessing justice. This lack of awareness or knowledge is particularly evident among young homeless people, homeless people from culturally diverse backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander homeless people, homeless people experiencing mental illness and homeless people with an intellectual disability.55
One interviewee more succinctly said:
… if you don’t know your rights, you got none. That’s the bottom line.56
A specific example was given in relation to victim’s compensation. Stakeholders commented that homeless people who have been the victim of a crime are often unaware that they may have a right to victim’s compensation, or that some legal assistance services can help them with a victim’s compensation claim.57
Accepting legal problems as ‘the norm’
… often they just accept their problems, saying ‘Well that’s just the way it is for homeless people.58
A concerning theme that arose in discussions about barriers to accessing legal assistance was that many of the difficulties faced by people when homeless were simply accepted as ‘part of life’. This attitude was raised frequently, and in relation to different types of legal issues, including social security, crime and employment.
So a lot of the clients … kind of accept Centrelink as being sort of like just an act of God. You know what I mean, I got cut off, oh well. You know, like because they don’t understand how the processes work and so for them it’s like for some arbitrary reason Centrelink has cut me off, and they don’t necessarily seek help for a while. And sometimes you only find out by accident that people have been breached. And usually these things can be reversed.59
Some legal issues are considered the norm. Some get harassed every day or get asked to move on, but they are not seen as legal issues. Often the reasoning is ‘why bother’. They don’t conceptualise those incidences as assault or theft.60
And the other one is they get work, often part-time or casual work, and then just suddenly for no reason after a month they get the sack … we’d say you’ve got certain rights about that, especially if you start quizzing them and it’s obvious they haven’t been paid correct rates and so on. Very occasionally someone will accept a referral to the [Department of Industrial Relations] or… to have it investigated [but] mostly they just don’t want to pursue it. They just write it off as their lot in life, it’s just bad luck.61
This ‘normalisation’ acts as a barrier for homeless people to access legal services, as they simply do not see problems they may encounter as legal issues or as a possible infringement of their rights.62
Beliefs about the legal system
In consultations undertaken with homeless people and their advocates in this study, the view was expressed that the legal system could not, or would not, be used in their interest, nor would it find in their favour.63 For instance:
As far as the legal system goes, you know Legal Aid or a government representative body … well they are not going to fight the government, they are not going to fight the prosecutor, which is the government, well they are not going to fight too hard for you …64
A belief that the legal system cannot or will not assist them (whether accurate or otherwise) was reported to discourage homeless people from accessing legal services, for criminal, civil and/or family law matters. For instance, a number of interviewees were estranged from their partners and children.65 While most indicated that they would like contact with their children, they assumed that, given their current circumstances, they would have little hope of a successful legal outcome, and that consequently there was no point in approaching a legal service. The following discussion with a woman recently arrived from New Zealand illustrates the point. She could not afford the $1400 cost of applying for permanent residency and therefore was not entitled to social security. She had casual work in a factory and was living in an inner-city hostel.
I’ve got one more thing I’m concerned about, my daughter, she lives in Perth, I rang up her dad, who she is living with, he’s not actually on the birth certificate, he said he would look after her until I got onto my feet, and I rang him up and asked him for my daughter back and he refused to give her back to me.
[Interviewer]: Have you seen anyone about this?
No, because I don’t know how to go about anything like that, and plus because I am at [hostel] I can’t do anything about it.
[Interviewer]: Has anyone … provided you with any information?
No, I haven’t spoken to anyone about it, the thing is I still have to save up for a place. I don’t know how to work around it.66
While this woman may have been granted contact with her daughter, she acknowledged that to have some chance of gaining residence of her daughter, she would need to have appropriate accommodation and a means of supporting her child.
A study on domestic violence and homelessness reported a ‘recurring theme’ among participants “of [a] lack of confidence in the ability of the legal system to ensure the safety of women and children” in domestic violence situations.67
It should be noted that, in some cases, people may be correct in their assessment that the legal system cannot assist them in certain situations.
Negative experiences and perceptions of legal processes
Pessimistic views about the law may be a consequence of negative experiences with legal services or authorities in the past, and/or poor outcomes in previous legal matters. For instance, a legal service may not have been able to assist them, they were unhappy with a legal service that was provided (see Chapter 6), or may have had what they perceived to be a poor legal outcome. By way of example, one worker stated:
… a lot of the people on the streets will not even approach Legal Aid today because they’ve been knocked back that many times. They just don’t want it. The other stigma attached is ‘Oh they’re Legal Aid, they’re not going to do their best for me.68
As suggested here, negative perceptions of legal services such as legal aid or pro bono services can also arise from a stigma that a ‘free’ service is a ‘second rate’ service (see Chapter 6).
Previous experiences and perceptions of police
As will be discussed in Chapter 7, police are a key point of contact between homeless people and the legal system. Street-based homeless people in particular come to the attention of police due to their visibility and occupation of public space.69 Therefore, the types of interaction homeless people have with police can impact upon homeless people’s expectations of the justice system as a whole, and on the actions they take in pursuing their rights.
Well, there’s been many times like, well once I was mugged and I went to the police and they basically made it out like I was lying …. They basically just kept trying to kick holes in all of my stories and I kept telling them, and they still questioned me like ‘we don’t believe you’. So I just gave up in the end.70
An Indigenous interviewee described a particular situation, and the impact of this:
The last time I was a victim of a crime was about nine months ago … I stepped in to stop an older fella from being belted up by a younger fella. … I reported the matter to the police and …after the police had taken my story I felt more a victim then than what I did when I was getting hit. The police, they come around and they say, ‘You know, this young person can come back and counter sue you and say that you assaulted him’, but I said, ‘I never assaulted him!’ …
I mean the thing is, there I was for the first time in my life doing the appropriate thing but I felt like I was given a good kick in the guts off the coppers.71
I remember that was upsetting Paul* as much as the actual physical things that had gone was the attitude of the police and I can remember Paul* describing it, he said, ‘The police looked at me and looked at the other fellow and just because I was Indigenous and I was bigger they automatically started talking about counter-suing.’ And of course that discourages people from pursuing their rights.72
Thus, these types of encounters appear to engender a belief that police and, by association, the legal system work against rather than serve homeless people such as themselves.
If we believe that the police are the purveyors of justice, and that they don’t follow through on that justice, then we have no faith in the justice system any more.73
Some of the positive interactions between homeless people and police are discussed in Chapter 7.
Not knowing where to go for legal assistance
Related to a lack of awareness of their rights was that people simply did not know where to go when things went wrong. As one participant said:
I don’t know of anywhere—I’ll just sort it out myself.74
Reluctance to approach services
Even in situations where a homeless person knows they have a legal problem and is aware of what services are available, they may still be reluctant to access the appropriate service. As Wesley Mission observed:
… a defining feature of homeless older people is that they often do not ask for assistance. Either they have the attitude ‘I don't deserve help’ and see themselves as failures in society or, more commonly, they are so independent, they will not ask for assistance.75
In keeping with this, a few of the homeless participants in this study commented that they preferred to handle matters themselves:
… housing and things like that, those sort of problems I handle meself … I don’t go to a tribunal or anything else about that … If I can’t get it fixed then I will have to do it the other way but I try and do it me own way first.76
I usually try and sort things out myself, unless it involves court matters, then I get lawyers, but I don’t like lawyers that much. They cost money.77
One homeless participant reported being suspicious about the intentions of the service provider:
I’ve stood on the street and anyone who comes to me with a social welfare capacity in mind to hand me a piece of paper or something, I’m very suspicious. We wonder, ‘What do you want?’ We’ve learned that the only time someone offers you something is if they want something in return.78
A rural service provider said:
Women are too embarrassed to go there [a legal service]. Not educated that they need to get a solicitor. If there is an AVO hearing they will just go to court and stand up and take what is coming to them.79
Actively avoiding services
Another concern raised in the consultations for this study was that some homeless people actively avoided using support services, unless there was an urgent need to do so. Parents were reported to fear that their children would be removed from their care if authorities discovered they were homeless or facing other crises (e.g. family breakdown, financial hardship, alcohol- and drug-related issues).80 In addition, some young homeless people were reported to fear being placed with DoCS. Among the specific examples given at a roundtable discussion were:
Young couples that have got children that have been on drugs and substance abuse and trying to make a go of it. They’ll come in but you can’t get anywhere near them because they don’t want to lose their baby.
… because young people are aware that mandatory reporting requirements are on us, it’s very, very difficult to engage with them. They know that if there’s an element of risk we have to report it so therefore quite often we can’t even get to meet them … And they’re terribly afraid of being with DoCS. It’s just the historical stuff.81
A fear of children being removed from their care is also reported to be one of a number of barriers to seeking help faced by some women escaping domestic violence:
Lack of information about how to get help, fear that they will not be believed, fear that their children may be taken from them, shame that they are in the situation and embarrassment over the social stigma attached to naming the violence.82
There may be grounds for women to be concerned about the possibility of DoCS involvement following a report to police about domestic violence. While NSW police are not always legally required to report to DoCS about children who are present at a domestic violence situation they attend, as a matter of policy they do so. This is done in the interests of the children’s safety.83
One inner-city outreach worker also noted a concern among his clients about privacy when giving personal details to agencies. He cited examples of people avoiding DOH services out of concern that they would be chased for debts and fines if they provided their name and contact details. Supporting this suspicion are requests on DOH forms for people to allow the department to share their personal details with other agencies.84
PAVS also noted that some marginal residents of caravan parks ‘do not want to be noticed’ for fear of being identified by other agencies (e.g. DoCS regarding their children, Centrelink or Housing regarding unpaid debts, police regarding outstanding warrants). They were suspicious of any offers of support, even from tenancy workers.85
Conclusion
The experiences of homeless people, and the observations of their advocates and service providers in this study, indicate that homeless people face multiple and substantial barriers in the following:
- identifying their legal problems among the multiple issues they face
- recognising these as legitimate issues that deserve to and can be addressed
- seeking legal assistance to address those issues
- finding time and energy to address those issues.
From the evidence gathered in this study, people who are homeless tend to focus on addressing their immediate needs, such as finding safe accommodation, meeting social security requirements and/or caring for their family. Coupled with limited resources, a fear or lack of knowledge of the legal system, a perception that the law would never work in their interests, and limited capacity to address issues (e.g. due to limited literacy or education, mental health issues or addiction), legal issues are likely to remain unaddressed.
Services report that when homeless people finally do contact a legal service (if at all), often the issue has usually already reached crisis point. For example, the eviction is imminent, their benefits have been cut off or their court case is tomorrow.86 One caseworker observed that in some cases it may well be too late to resolve the issue (e.g. the limitation period may have expired) or the issue has become more complex and difficult to address.87
The multiple, urgent and interrelated legal problems homeless people have, together with the barriers they face in addressing these issues, have significant implications for the nature and type of legal service delivery that is appropriate for homeless people in NSW.
The following chapter discusses different forms of legal assistance available in NSW and the features of those services that either hinder or facilitate the provision of legal assistance to homeless people.