 |  |
, |
Ch 7. Assistance by non-legal agencies
-
Well, it’s somewhere you can come to get off the street if you need to … You can get the right advice. Instead of asking someone on the street … [The caseworker] here can give you the right people to go and see to start with, help you make phone calls if you need to, and things like that.1
The current and other studies indicate that homeless people are more likely to seek legal assistance from people or services that they are familiar with and already see in their day-to-day life.2 There are an array of agencies and organisations that specifically assist homeless people, providing food, shelter, medical attention and drug and alcohol treatment. Some of these organisations also provide advocacy, legal information, advice and referral services. There are also many general services accessed by people while homeless (e.g. health services, schools, community centres).
In the current study, nearly half of the homeless participants said that they would go to or had gone to a legal service (usually Legal Aid) if and when they had a legal problem.3 However, as will be argued in this chapter, many homeless people also turn, at least initially, to non-legal services or workers for advice if facing a legal issue.
This chapter looks at the role that non-legal services play in assisting homeless people with their legal problems or in linking them with legal support. It will examine:
- non-legal support and services that are accessed by homeless people in NSW, as possible sites for legal assistance or referral
- what non-legal services do to assist homeless people with legal problems, and the challenges they face in providing this assistance
- how to support non-legal services in addressing their clients’ legal needs
- options for coordinating legal and non-legal support to address the needs of homeless people.
Non-legal services accessed by homeless people
The types of services and support networks used by homeless people may differ considerably, depending upon their location, needs, demographic characteristics and how long they have been homeless. For example, Chamberlain and Mackenzie and others report that people at risk of homelessness tend to be in contact with and/or supported by a range of people and agencies: family members, friends, schools, doctors, community health workers, GPs, youth workers, tenancy workers, welfare workers, domestic violence workers, refuge staff, police and housing workers and Centrelink staff. Once people become entrenched in homelessness, their support networks may change. People may lose contact with family, leave school or move away from the local community networks that previously supported them. They may have more contact with police and SAAP services, and maintain contact with Centrelink.4 These services are considered in this chapter as possible points of intervention for legal support or referral to legal support.
In their work on pathways to homelessness, Chamberlain and Mackenzie concluded that early intervention, that is, providing assistance to people before or as they first become homeless, is easier and is more likely to result in better outcomes. As they observe: “once people lose their home, their problems always get worse”.5 The value of early intervention was also stressed as a key message arising out of the 2003 Beyond the Divide national conference on homelessness.6
Since the mid-90s there has been increasing emphasis by governments on ‘early intervention’ to reduce homelessness. Two major early intervention programs have attracted Commonwealth and State funding:7 the FHPP and the Reconnect program.8 In an interim evaluation report, the FHPP identified so-called ‘first to know’ agencies:
‘First to know’ agencies include real estate agencies and housing authorities who may be first to know when a current tenancy is at risk. Other ‘first to know’ agencies include general welfare agencies, schools, and family support agencies.9
Thus, there appears to be an increasing focus on early intervention and the range of people and agencies that may be in a position to provide a point of intervention or referral to people as they become homeless.
In this chapter, consideration is not only given to possible sites for early legal intervention, but also to those services that reach people already entrenched in different forms of homelessness. Table 7.1 provides a summary of the types of non-legal support services identified in this study as being accessed by people who are homeless across different circumstances. Services accessed have been divided into those that people at risk of or entering homelessness tend to be in contact with and those that people entrenched in homelessness are more likely to access.
Table 7.1: Support and services accessed by homeless people
 | Potential links to people at risk of or entering homelessness | Potential links to people entrenched in homelessness |
| Young people | Family and friends | Outreach services |
| Schools | SAAP and other homeless |
| Local youth services | person’s services |
| Kids Help Line | Police |
| Adults – homeless | Family and friends | Centrelink |
| through housing crisis | Tenancy workers | Court/court support |
| Centrelink | Health services, including: |
| Early childhood services/schools | -mental health services |
| Neighbourhood centres | -alcohol and drug services |
| Telephone services (e.g. Lifeline) | -GPs. |
| Adults – homeless | As above; also: | |
| through family | Domestic violence support workers | |
| breakdown | SAAP services (e.g. refuges) | |
| Community health services/GPs | |
| Counselling services | |
| (e.g. Relationships Australia) | |
| Court | |
Note that Table 7.1 is only indicative. It provides a framework for discussing the various support services accessed by people experiencing different levels of homelessness, rather than an exhaustive list of support people and agencies. Furthermore, there will be considerable variation in the services accessed by different people at different stages of homelessness. For instance, some people will access SAAP services as they become homeless (e.g. a woman’s refuge). Others who are entrenched in homelessness might be supported by or living with family and friends.
These possible points of intervention for legal assistance are discussed below. Some services, particularly those that are not specific to homeless people, may only be potential sites for referring homeless people to legal advice (e.g. with a referral telephone number). Others, such as SAAP services, may provide more comprehensive support. However, all are relevant in some way to helping homeless people address their legal needs.
Family and friends
I’m ‘the baa baa black sheep’ of the family, so my family wouldn’t help me.10
Although some homeless people are estranged from family members, for many others, family and friends are a key source of support.
A mate of mine got me onto a bloke who worked for Aboriginal Legal Aid … if I wouldn’t have been told by another source, I wouldn’t have known, and I would have been up the creek in a barbed wire canoe forkin’ money out of me pockets I really couldn’t afford.11
Not only are a sizable proportion of the homeless in NSW staying temporarily with family and friends (see Chapter 3), but family and friends are also reported to be a primary source of support for victims of domestic violence and young people, particularly in the early ‘in and out’ stage of homelessness.12 This is consistent with a study by Dimopoulas et al. on service provision to people experiencing family violence, which reported: “trusted friends and close family members were often a first point of contact for women [in family violence situations] seeking support”.13
However, while family and friends may be a key source of support, it cannot be assumed that they are any better informed about legal processes or services than the homeless people they are supporting. They may be best reached by increasing general community awareness of legal assistance services and sites for legal information.
Schools
In 2001, it was estimated that 42% of homeless youth (aged 12–18 years) in NSW were still at school or TAFE.14 Furthermore, a nationwide study of homelessness among school students also found that 37% of homeless students had been homeless for six months or more.15 The following story illustrates the situation of young homeless school students.
This boy left home in February 2000, because of domestic violence by his stepfather. His stepfather is extremely physically abusive towards him and his mother was not willing to intervene. He is currently living with friends. At school, he is completing year 12, although he has had many days off school and has wanted to leave on many occasions. Constant counselling and support are provided at school.16
Thus, schools and school counsellors in particular are sites for early intervention to young people (and potentially their families) as they become homeless.17 Chamberlain and MacKenzie state:
We know that most young people have their first experience of homelessness when they are at school. If schools are unaware of these students or do not provide assistance then they drop through the early intervention net. Most join the ranks of the homeless unemployed and some make the transition to chronicity.18
Successful intervention is harder to achieve once young people become chronically homeless, and the pathways to providing legal support change. Young people in this situation are more likely to be in contact with police, government agencies and youth and other SAAP services.
Health and community services
General practitioners, alcohol and drug services, mental health services, early childhood centres, neighbourhood centres and generic welfare services may all be accessed by people facing or experiencing homelessness.19 For example, one interviewee who was not in contact with a SAAP service said:
I’ve just linked back up here now with Redfern Community Health. I’ve got a really good—I think she’s a mental health nurse or something. I see her every couple of weeks.20
A community project coordinator, spoke of his role as a link to other services:
I get a couple of people coming into the office (and that is not my function) … people will come in and say, ‘Can I make a call?’ or ‘Would you make a call for me?’.21
Of note is an increasing focus among health services, particularly in inner-city Sydney on conducting outreach to homeless people in the area, and on linking these initiatives with related services (e.g. Centrelink).22 While it is not appropriate or feasible to expect health and other workers to take on the task of ‘legal assistance’ or case management beyond their usual role, there may be benefits to homeless clients if there is scope for referral to local legal services or access to legal outreach from these sites.
Telephone counselling services
Another potential point of contact for homeless people are telephone-based counselling services, such as Lifeline, Relationships Australia, Parent’s line and Kids Help Line. While homeless people face restricted access to internet and telephone services, data from Kids Help Line indicate that some young people facing homelessness do use internet and telephone support services.23
Just wanting to know her legal rights … she is determined to leave home because her mum regularly beats her. [Female caller to Kids Help Line, aged 16.]24
In 2003, Kids Help Line answered nearly 193 500 calls from people 18 years and under in NSW, 45% of whom were from rural areas. Calls most commonly concerned family relationships (16% of all calls), but 4% of calls concerned leaving home or homelessness.25 The latter group called about issues such as the legal age at which they could leave home, and how to access social security and employment.26
Information websites
As reported in Chapter 3, more than one-third of the homeless people in NSW are aged between 12 and 24 years. While a proportion of homeless young people will not have access to or the capacity to use the internet,27 websites accessed by homeless young people still may be considered as potential avenues to legal information.28 Some of the limitations of web-based information services for homeless people have already been discussed in Chapter 6.
Tenancy and housing workers
People who become homeless after losing public housing or private rental accommodation29 may be in contact with housing workers and tenancy advice and advocacy services (TAAS). In their study of pathways to homelessness, Chamberlain and Mackenzie observed:
Many people who lose their employment do not go to an agency for the homeless, but they may contact a housing worker if they are in public housing or generic support workers in community agencies.30
TAAS are independent services providing advice and advocacy in dealing with housing issues. They also issue fact sheets and other publications to tenants and assist with the preparation of submissions to the CTTT.31 Most are responsible for geographical areas, while others are specialist statewide services such as PAVS, which supports people in residential parks.32
Residential park owners
Residential (caravan) park owners are another link to support for residents of their parks. A review of family support programs being run in caravan parks reported:
Park operators played a big role in the running of the park community and how people were treated. Where a park operator was supportive this facilitated families’ knowledge of and access to services, where negative, services may be actively discouraged from coming onto the park.33
Thus, on the basis of this observation, park owners may have a role in allowing and indeed facilitating the access of support services to residents of their parks. This is particularly important if residential parks are located away from support services and residents lack access to transport.
Consumer and advocacy bodies
The consultations undertaken for this study indicate that consumer and advocacy groups are another important source of support to homeless people. Relevant groups include BLAG, Homelessness NSW/ACT, Youth Accommodation Association and Shelter NSW. Advocacy services such as PAVS also set up consumer networks among their clients (e.g. within residential parks).
Other groups with members who experience homelessness include the Community Restorative Centre (CRC), Justice Support (supporting prisoners, their families and friends), Sex Worker Outreach Project, NSW Users and Aids Association and The Gender Centre (supporting transgender people). CRC workers, for example, assist people leaving prison to “find housing, address debt, return to work, deal with health issues, and develop the skills they need to live independently”.34 One homeless participant commented:
Organisations like Sex Workers Outreach Project or the Prostitutes Collective, if they were better resourced with information about legal services, then maybe we would go to legal services more often. If the information was more readily available in those organisations, you may find the working girls using those services.35
Court support schemes
Court support workers are available in some NSW courts to assist people affected by the court system, including offenders, families of participants and witnesses. Broadly speaking, there are two types of court support schemes: specialist and generalist.
The Women’s Domestic Violence Court Assistance Scheme (WDVCAS), administered by Legal Aid NSW, is a specialist court support scheme. There are 33 WDVCASs operating at 55 local courts throughout NSW. WDVCASs provide women and their children with support, advocacy, referral and information and facilitate their access to appropriate legal representation. They assist women to obtain legal protection from domestic violence and obtain assistance for their other needs such as finding housing and obtaining social security.36
Generalist court support workers are generally voluntary, not necessarily legally trained and may work for non-legal agencies, including welfare organisations (e.g. Salvation Army) and specialist support groups37 (e.g. CRC).38 To provide an example, CRC provides a network of ‘court support’ volunteers in local courts throughout metropolitan Sydney and the Family Court at Parramatta. The court support workers are trained to provide information, referral to Legal Aid NSW, and personal support, on a confidential basis.
Centrelink
Centrelink is the Commonwealth agency that administers social security payments in Australia. As such, Centrelink is a key point of contact with homeless people, especially those who have little or no contact with SAAP or other services.39
There is some evidence that Centrelink may be the only point of contact that some homeless people have with formal support agencies or government bureaucracy.40 For example, a project examining the needs of families in caravan parks found that “families had little knowledge of and were not accessing services, apart from meeting immediate needs, for example Centrelink”.41 Mackenzie and Chamberlain identify Centrelink as an important site of early intervention for people at risk of homelessness through housing crisis (see Chapter 3), because they are usually in receipt of a government pension, even when they are isolated from other services.42 Finally, Dimopoulas et al. noted Centrelink as “a significant source of referrals to services which provide assistance to those experiencing family violence”.43 In this context it is notable that Centrelink describes itself as “an entry point or ‘gateway’ for customers to a wide range of other services in the community”.44 This may be particularly true of rural areas, where other support services are in short supply.
Centrelink is different here. We don’t have an organisation in town which can give out urgent payments, or food vouchers. People would often come into Centrelink for this sort of assistance because they know that Centrelink in Walgett would help them in this.45
Many of the homeless people we consulted reported mixed success in dealing with Centrelink customer service officers (see Chapter 8). However, Centrelink also employ a range of specialist support officers (e.g. social workers, Indigenous specialist officers, and specialist Youth Servicing Units).46 One respondent who was supported by a Centrelink social worker found this assistance useful.47 Others indicated that they had been assisted by Centrelink officers who did outreach to the SAAP services they used.48
Among other duties, Centrelink social workers “provide counselling, support and referral services to Centrelink customers who are experiencing major changes in their lives or a crisis such as family breakdown or domestic and family violence”.49 As such, these workers would appear well placed to assist homeless clients in addressing their issues with Centrelink in particular, as well as to appropriately refer homeless clients to legal support services. However, the ease or otherwise of accessing these specialist workers is not explored in this study.
While a number of participants reported problems dealing with social security issues, Centrelink could be further explored as a point of referral to legal services for people facing homelessness, who are otherwise out of touch with support services.
Recognising that only a proportion of Centrelink clients will access specialist workers, the Centrelink office could also be considered as a potential site for legal information, making available at least the telephone number for LawAccess and/or local legal advice services. Another option, which to our knowledge has not been explored, might be to provide a ‘telephone booth’ with direct access to LawAccess and/or other relevant advice services in Centrelink waiting areas. It should be noted that the capacity of Centrelink to assist clients in a proactive way may be more limited when clients are supported by Centrelink agents rather than offices (e.g. in remote locations).
Law enforcement officers
Police are usually the first point of contact homeless people have with ‘the law’ if they are charged with an offence, if they are the victim of a crime, or if they are asked to move on in public space.50 Police are also often called to deal with people who are violent or exhibiting other difficult behaviour arising from mental health or alcohol and other drug issues.51 Transit police and local council enforcement officers may also interact with homeless people in similar ways during the course of their duties. Finally, police may be a key source of support in domestic violence situations, significant as family breakdown is a common pathway to homelessness.52 Thus, police officers in particular have multiple roles in dealing with homeless people: charging and arresting people and providing protection as well as information, advice and referral.
The data collected for the current study indicate that people entrenched in homelessness frequently interact with police, and use police as a source of information about the legal process. One participant who had worked as a prostitute noted:
Our space is with the police. When you’re standing on a street corner, your most common contact with any legal service is with the police. They are not arresting you every night. One copper … would assist me wherever he could, and I would assist him where I could, trading information, doing my bit to keep the streets a bit clean from heroin addicts. I would hand him information, he would hand me information when I was in need. He sent me to the Royal Women’s Hospital when I was raped. He provided me with the legal services when I was raped.53
Another participant also reported seeking advice from the police:
[Interviewer]: And did you see a lawyer when you had the AVO taken out?
-
No, I went to the police station and just made a statement and that, and they rang me up and just let me know what was going on … They were good. They gave me information about the AVO and what to expect.54
Another said:
[Interviewer]: If you had another legal issue who do you think you would go and see?
-
I don’t know, I would go down to the cop station. Just ask them, ‘I’m going through this sort of thing, what can I do about it?55
However, the consultations also revealed a complex relationship between police and homeless people, where police are viewed and experienced as both adversaries and as protectors.
It is funny for me to say, because I hate them. But at the moment I have got no trouble with the police. You know, I work in [Sydney] and I have had a few hassles with different people … and the police said to me, ‘Look, I will give you my phone number and ring me up any time and we will come and sort it out for you.’ … they see me there every day and see me having a go and everything else and so, you know …56
-
I don’t like them very much. But you know, if I get into trouble, then if my only option is to ask them what should I do about it, then I am going to have to do it, you know what I mean. Regardless of whether I like them or not.57
Some homeless participants in this study reported negative interactions with police, which, in contrast to those quoted above, acted as a barrier to them pursuing legal issues through this avenue (see Chapter 5).
The police perspective
According to those consulted for this study, police identify different groups of people within the homeless population: the regular ‘street livers’ who they may be quite familiar with, transient people who they may not have seen before (or at least for a while) and drug user/dealers (who may be regular or transient). Police were also very conscious of the vulnerability of people sleeping in public spaces to becoming the victims of crime.58
The official policy approach of NSW Police to homeless people is outlined within the Protocol for Homeless People, a State government interagency agreement.59 The protocol states that homeless people should be ‘left alone’ unless they request assistance, they appear to be distressed or in need of assistance, their behaviour threatens their safety or the safety and security of people around them, or their behaviour is likely to result in damage to property or the environment.60
A number of other services in the inner city noted the collaboration between police, other service providers and street outreach workers.61 For instance, police in one area distribute cards with the contact details for outreach services to homeless people. They have also used their radios to find out if beds are available at SAAP services.62 The officer responsible for liaising with homeless services in this area commented: “when police take the time to work out the person’s circumstances, they can do more for the person”.63
In summary, police interact with homeless people in a range of circumstances: they issue fines; they move people on in public spaces; they assist people who are victims of crime, including domestic violence; they arrest and charge people for criminal offences; and they take or refer people to other services. While, in some instances, these interactions can be negative for the homeless person, police remain a potential pathway to legal information and assistance.
Homeless person’s services
The support networks and agencies described above support but do not specifically target homeless people. In contrast, the following services are aimed at the homeless population, providing accommodation, referral and other support services.
Drop in and street outreach
Drop in centres and outreach services generally help homeless people to access accommodation, food services, health care (including mental health care) or assistance with finding longer term housing. In inner-city Sydney there are two major outreach services to homeless people: the City Street Outreach Service, which is provided by the Independent Community Living Association under contract to the City of Sydney, and the NSW government Homelessness Action Team Support and Outreach Services.
Street outreach workers generally support clients who are entrenched in homelessness and have very complex needs, particularly mental health and/or addiction issues. They have a particular role in linking this group of homeless people with services to address these complex needs. In this role, workers report being asked for advice on a range of legal issues. The challenges faced by outreach workers in meeting these advice needs are discussed in greater detail later in this chapter.
Homeless Persons Information Centre (HPIC)
HPIC, run by City of Sydney Council, is a telephone information and referral service for people who are homeless, or at risk of homelessness in NSW. It provides professional assessments and referrals for clients seeking accommodation and support services throughout the State.64 In 2002–03, HPIC received nearly 44 000 calls. Of these, approximately 27 000 calls were for accommodation required that night.65
SAAP services
As discussed in Chapter 1, nearly 400 SAAP agencies in NSW provide accommodation and other services to homeless people. Nearly half of these agencies target youth (177 agencies) and a further 89 target women escaping domestic violence. Only 25 agencies are specifically for homeless families.
A number of homeless participants in this study described how they used SAAP services as a link to legal and/or advocacy support.
Exodus … have access to everything, all these different organisations from the law onwards, all these contacts … They give out free lunches, you go into the hall, have lunch, have a chat. If you have a problem you go to the office, you tell them what your problem is at the reception, like, ‘I’ve got a legal issue’ and they say, ‘Sit down, we’ll go and get our legal person on for you.’ From there, they refer you either to Legal Aid or somebody else who will tell you what your options are, and you take it from there. Because without the options, where do we go? We’re lost.66
The level of assistance SAAP services provide clients with legal problems is evident in their service statistics, displayed in Table 7.2, below.
Table 7.2: SAAP support periods: advocacy and selected other services provided to selected clients, NSW, 2002–0367
|
Male alone
|
Female alone
|
Females with
|
Total support
|
|
25+
|
25+
|
children
|
periods
|
|
N=19 950
|
N=4900
|
N=6350
|
N=44 300
|
| Type of service |
%*
|
%*
|
%*
|
%*
|
| Assistance with legal issues/court support |
1.8
|
14.1
|
23.7
|
8.2
|
| Advocacy/liaison on behalf of client |
15.4
|
35.5
|
50.3
|
29
|
| Assistance to obtain/maintain independent housing |
7
|
16
|
32.9
|
15.3
|
| Assistance to obtain/maintain government payment |
3.5
|
9.5
|
17.3
|
8.7
|
| Advice/information |
46.7
|
58.3
|
70.3
|
55.9
|
| Assistance with immigration issues |
0.1
|
1.6
|
1.9
|
0.6
|
* Clients can receive multiple services, so percentages do not add up to 100%. Only 3 of 8 subgroups are detailed in this table. See full cited in footnote for information on other groups.
Source: AIHW, SAAP 2002–03 NSW Tables. Table 6.3 p. 24.
Table 7.2 shows that 8% of all SAAP ‘support periods’68 completed in the 2002–03 year involved ‘assistance with legal issues or court support’. Another 30% of support periods involved ‘advocacy or liaison on behalf of the client’. A further 15% of support periods involved ‘assistance to obtain or maintain housing’, and 9% involved ‘assistance to obtain or remain on government benefits’.
As may also be seen on Table 7.2, different groups of clients relied more heavily on SAAP services as a link to legal assistance than others. For example, approximately 24% of support periods to ‘females with children’, but only 2% of support periods to men over the age of 25, involved assistance with a legal issue/court support. This particular discrepancy may in part reflect the proportion of SAAP services that are women’s refuges.
Table 7.3 shows the number of requests made to NSW SAAP services for legal or advocacy related services during 2002–03, and how these requests were responded to.
Table 7.3: Legal- or advocacy-related SAAP services requested by clients in closed support periods, by provision, NSW, 2002–03
| Type of service |
Not provided
|
Referred
|
Provided by SAAP only
|
Provided and referred
|
Total
|
Number
|
|
%
|
%
|
%
|
%
|
%
| |
| Assist with legal issues/court |
9.1
|
10.8
|
56
|
24.1
|
100
|
3500
|
| support | | | | | | |
| Advocacy/liaison on behalf of |
2.1
|
0.9
|
86.7
|
10.3
|
100
|
10 700
|
| client | | | | | | |
| Assist to obtain/maintain |
16.1
|
14.7
|
49.3
|
19.9
|
100
|
7450
|
| independent housing | | | | | | |
| Assist to obtain/maintain |
9
|
12.3
|
56.1
|
22.7
|
100
|
3650
|
| government payment | | | | | | |
| Advice/information |
1.1
|
0.1
|
92.8
|
5.9
|
100
|
21 750
|
| Assist with immigration issues |
5.8
|
10.9
|
51.4
|
30.9
|
100
|
250
|
Source: Drawn from AIHW, SAAP 2002–03 NSW Tables. Table 7.1, p. 26.
As may be seen in Table 7.3, in 2002–03, NSW SAAP services received 3500 requests for legal assistance or court support from clients and 10 700
requests for advocacy or liaison on behalf of clients. This is in addition to more than 11 000 requests for assistance to obtain or maintain housing and/or government payments. Fifty-six per cent of requests for legal assistance resulted in court support or assistance with legal issues being provided solely by the agency, and 35% of such requests involving a referral to another agency. Assistance with legal issues or court support was not provided in 9% of all ‘closed support periods’ in which it was requested. Generally, ‘advocacy support or liaison’ and requests for ‘advice or information’ were handled by the SAAP agencies themselves.
Thus, SAAP services play a key role in providing assistance with legal issues (e.g. information, liaison/advocacy) and in linking their homeless clients with legal assistance services. The specific ways that SAAP and other workers assist their clients with legal problems are outlined in the next section.
It should be noted that, while SAAP services are a key source of support to homeless people in NSW, some homeless people do not access services until well entrenched in homelessness, if at all.
There are also homeless people who cannot access SAAP services. In some cases there are no appropriate SAAP services in their area—there may be a local service for men but not for women or young people. In other cases, as reported by the NSW Ombudsman in a report on SAAP services, some groups of homeless people may be routinely excluded from relevant SAAP services (e.g. if they are using alcohol or drugs, or have a condition the service cannot manage).69 Finally, some people may not access SAAP services that have a philosophy or practice inconsistent with their beliefs or needs (e.g. a dependent drug user may not approach a service where abstinence is required).
Legal assistance provided by non-legal services
This section explores in more detail the support provided by non-legal workers and agencies to homeless people with legal problems. Support may be in the form of:
- legal information and advice (defined in Chapter 6)
- assessment and referral
- advocacy
- support through the legal process (including court support)
- case management.
Included in the discussion are the challenges faced by non-legal services in providing these types of support to homeless clients. The subsequent section discusses options to address these difficulties.
Legal information and advice
As indicated in the SAAP data referred to above, homeless clients often ask caseworkers for ‘information and advice’ about ‘legal’ issues. As well as asking ‘What shall I do?’, homeless clients ask how particular legal processes work, what sort of things they should expect to happen, what documents they need and how to dress if they have to appear in court.70 A worker’s capacity to answer these questions will depend significantly on their role and area of expertise (e.g. housing workers, financial counsellors, youth workers, general welfare workers).71 The following section details the challenges reported by non-legal support workers when their homeless clients appeal to them for advice and information about legal issues.
Challenges in providing and ‘interpreting’ legal information
In consultations for this study, outreach and other workers providing front line support to homeless people reported feeling quite stressed about providing legal information or ‘advice’ to clients. Some workers felt they were ‘running blind’ giving advice to people about what to do. They prefered being able to assist their clients directly into legal support.72 Some described the situation as ‘the blind leading the blind’.73 A few caseworkers reported difficulties in even finding legal information to assist their clients. One stated:
I’ve spent hours on it going to all the legal [internet] sites. I can't find anything. Or what they do is they send you to, give you a whole list of lawyers to look up and access these particulars lawyers in this field. And I think, oh gee we can’t afford that.74
Similarly, a report on domestic violence and homelessness noted:
In general, participants [workers surveyed] did not speak confidently or appear well informed about the legal rights of women in domestic and family violence situations.75
One factor which appears to fuel workers’ concerns about providing legal information to clients is an inability to delineate between what is ‘legal information’, ‘legal advice’ and ‘referral’: distinctions that are often unclear. Scott and Sage report:
The generalist community workers who have received no training in the law were reluctant to provide any form of assistance with the legal aspect of the client’s problem. This included a reluctance to provide any form of written legal information to clients or to carry out legal research on their behalf. These participants were fearful of providing wrong or out-of-date information to clients. They saw their primary role in these situations as providing referral to agencies with more specialist legal knowledge.76
Anxiety and a lack of information about the actual responsibilities of non-legal support workers under legislation and agency guidelines (e.g, by privacy legislation, agency procedures and guidelines, insurance issues) were also reported to affect the willingness of some workers to provide ‘legal’ information.77 Thus, consultations suggest that the capacity of workers to provide accurate plain language legal information depends on:
- their content knowledge, training and previous experience
- the accuracy and accessibility of the legal resources available to them (including personal contacts)
- the time they have available to consult and comprehend these legal resources
- the complexity of the client’s situation and of the legal processes or concepts they are describing to the client
- their understanding of their own legal obligations (e.g. privacy laws, insurance).
The value of ‘legal information’ to the client depends upon their capacity to understand the information provided and to act on that information. For the many reasons discussed in Chapter 5, homeless people may not be able apply non-specific legal information effectively to their own situations. For instance, in this study, a tenancy worker reported that the tenancy laws are often too complicated to explain to tenants over the telephone, particularly when the caller is preoccupied with other issues, such as finding somewhere else to live.78 In these circumstances, clients require a higher level of support to actively address the legal issue they are facing. This is consistent with previous research that shows generic legal information is of limited value of its own to disadvantaged people, but may be useful when provided in conjunction with other forms of assistance.79
Assessment and referral
A key role of homeless person’s services is to assess clients’ legal and other needs, provide the assistance required or refer them to specialist support. Referral is “the provision of information about another agency, including contacting or negotiating with another agency on the client’s behalf”.80 A ‘supported referral’ involves the referring caseworker or agency preparing information about the client’s circumstances for the agency the client is being referred to.
The importance of generalist welfare and support services as a source of referral to legal services is reflected in the referral statistics provided by the homeless person’s legal services consulted for this study. Between 75% and 90% of their clients had been referred by the host service or other community organisations.81
One worker interviewed for the current study stated: “our role is primarily talking to the client, finding out what the problem is, and making the appropriate referral”.82 Another commented:
Agencies that do proper case management should be identifying legal issues as part of this process.83
Caseworkers we consulted reported often having to actively support clients to follow through a referral. Support included making appointments for clients, actually accompanying people to appointments with their solicitors and assisting clients to obtain documents and complete forms. One homeless participant described this support as follows:
… as far as accessing agencies go, [caseworker] does all the accessing for me. That makes life a lot easier for me because I only have to rock up to the meeting with the agency and introduce myself. It’s good … the caseworkers have been a tremendous help and a very good benefit to me in such a situation which I am placed in. Twenty-four years of drug and alcohol abuse doesn’t help me much!84
Challenges in providing assessment and referral for legal issues
Successful referral depends upon caseworkers having the capacity to identify legal need and knowing where and how to appropriately refer the client. Consultations suggest that the level of referral to CLCs and Legal Aid by caseworkers and community organisations varies considerably, with some workers and organisations having limited knowledge about who they could refer clients to.85
According to Scott and Sage’s study,86 knowledge about who to call for legal information or who to refer a client to seems to depend upon the role, experience and networks of the agency or worker.87 For instance, two caseworkers interviewed for the current study remarked:
I know people at Legal Aid and at Redfern and Kingsford CLCs, that I can ring. As they know me they can help me out even if they are stretched.88
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I’ve had to make several phones calls. I’ve been lucky that I’ve remembered the name and got onto that same person again. You do get a connection there but it is really like pulling something out of a hat. It’s the luck of the draw. But I have found if you do get that kind of connection life can be so much easier and it’s amazing how these people tend to go that little bit further as well. They do seem to push things that little bit harder for the client which is really, really good. But it’s just making that connection.89
However, when referrals are based on personal knowledge and relationships, clients may not get referred to relevant services that are outside the agency or caseworker’s usual networks. For example:
Workers in the homeless sector may not be aware of the full range of services which fall outside their primary area e.g. may not be aware of the IDRS. The IDRS tends to get referrals from third parties working in the intellectual disability field (e.g. from supported accommodation services). Accessibility hinges on being able to identify someone who has an intellectual disability and referring them through to the IDRS.90
Another issue faced by non-legal services when referring clients is delay in the availability of legal support. This is particularly stressful when the client’s legal issue is urgent.
Our service to the clients often involves legal issues and … we need proper legal advice, extra legal advice on tap. I mean we can’t wait six months, eight months. Sometimes decisions need to be made and we need advice there and then …91
If homeless people are referred to legal services that cannot assist the referred client because they lack resources or expertise, the client may remain without legal support. Equally, if clients end up on a ‘referral treadmill’, where they are referred to one agency only to be referred onto another, they potentially lose interest in pursuing the matter at some point. A study by Pleasence et al. for the British Legal Services Commission describes a phenomenon called ‘referral fatigue’, where the likelihood of clients obtaining advice from an advisor they have been referred to sharply declined as the number of advisors they visited increased.92 The authors conclude that there is “a degree of exhaustion among members of the public as a result of being pushed from adviser to adviser”.93
Facilitating appropriate referrals
The NSW Legal Referral Forum describes ‘effective legal referral’ as practice that:
- assists the customer to reach a suitable service provider with the least number of referrals
- assists the customer to take appropriate action by providing tools
- carries out the referral in a way that is appropriate to customer needs.94
Pleasence et al. also stress:
… the importance of equipping those many individuals outside of the recognised advice sector from whom people may initially seek advice (such as health workers, social workers and politicians) with the means to effectively refer them to appropriate advisers if necessary, both through professional education and through making appropriate advisers accessible to those who are referred onto them.95
One way to increase the appropriate referral of homeless people to legal support, is to provide simple, clear community-wide information about where to get legal assistance. This can happen on a local basis (see discussion on local networks later in this chapter) or statewide. One option for consideration is the wide distribution of the LawAccess contact number, to increase the potential for people at risk of and in the early stages of homelessness to be linked with legal information and advice. LawAccess can provide legal information and advice by telephone, and link people with local face-to-face legal services (see Chapter 6). While there are issues with homeless people accessing telephone based services, some non-legal workers suggested:
… so we’ll hand them a brochure … for legal aid or whatever … where the guy is not going to say to us ‘I can’t read’. But if we had that outreach component or telephone access, we carry mobiles with each worker where we can just plug it in and say, ‘Here you go pal, speak to this person.’ 96
In summary, evidence from this study suggests that many homeless people initially seek advice or assistance from non-legal services or workers. SAAP services in particular already play a key role in referring clients to legal support. However, there are some difficulties with this process due to the lack of knowledge of legal services among some non-legal service providers and the risk of fatiguing clients with frequent and/or inappropriate referrals. Providing referral information (such as the LawAccess telephone number) to other services accessed by homeless people may increase the referral of homeless people in diverse circumstances to appropriate legal assistance.
Non-legal advocacy
As shown in Tables 7.2 and 7.3, another significant role for generalist caseworkers is advocating on behalf of their clients to government agencies and other services. Advocacy involves the caseworker directly engaging with other service providers on the client’s behalf. Some participants felt that the presence of an advocate made a crucial difference to the way they were treated, and consequently helped to resolve issues.
It doesn’t matter what your problem is, down there they do not seem to be sympathetic in a lot of cases. I took [caseworker] with me when I was having a problem down at Centrelink and that was unbelievable how quick it got fixed up! Because [the caseworker] was with me!97
This participant’s caseworker also observed:
They will put something over the clients if clients go there on their own. Just your presence there, even if you don’t necessarily have to say anything, just the knowledge that there is some independent person there who is an advocate for that person. They are on their much better behaviour and they will take a somewhat different attitude, even down to their tone of voice. Because a client will go down there on his own and come back in a terrible state the way they have been spoken to and treated and I will go along and it will be a somewhat different story.98
In some cases, the support of the caseworker was reported to be the only thing that keeps the client engaged in the process.
We find that sometimes we don’t have the manpower to go with somebody to an appointment and they won’t sit through that appointment, they’ll lose their temper halfway through that appointment. Even if you are just there to say, you know just hear what this person has to say, that can help them too, because they don’t really want to walk out of the appointment and they just can’t keep it together.99
Challenges in providing advocacy for homeless clients
In a roundtable discussion with non-legal workers for the current study, participants discussed the balance between self-determination and the autonomy of clients, and intervention by caseworkers to assist clients in resolving issues.
We take them to Centrelink, we take them to the Department of Housing. We sit down with them and you have to explain to them what the questions are on the Department of Housing form or the Centrelink form or the Legal Aid form … I mean some of the underlying principles of SAAP are self-determination and autonomy. I often find that if they were allowed to handle things on their own you would make no progress so you have to strike a balance between being too directive and disempowering and on the other hand just allowing them to flounder …100
However, the complexity of the legislation, regulations and policies that surround the provision of government services (e.g. Centrelink requirements and DOH policies) can also present a challenge to workers trying to advocate for their clients. Informants in this study suggest that workers benefit from having detailed knowledge of bureaucratic processes to successfully negotiate these services, and to identify when their clients may not have been dealt with appropriately. At one of the roundtable discussions, a group of non-legal workers remarked:
… for me the issue is understanding the legal obligations of government departments, and being able to advocate for our clients, being able to get our clients what they are entitled to. I think there needs to be a demystification of the way that all of the sort of government agencies that work with our clients operate.101
… when it comes to legislation of all the different departments, we’re not quite sure what the legal duties of other departments are.102
Thus, although advocacy by non-legal workers is sometimes pivotal to a homeless client gaining a satisfactory outcome to a legal or bureaucratic problem, the success of such help is quite dependent on the extent of the individual worker’s knowledge of the processes in question.
Supporting clients with the legal process
Once a referral has been made to a legal service, a caseworker’s involvement may still continue.
I work in conjunction with [a CLC] so that if I’ve got a female client who’s been sexually assaulted there’s no way she wants to tell her story to the male solicitor up there so he’s quite agreeable for me to take all the statements, to liaise with the doctor and get everything together and then he submits the case. But I haven’t got the resources or time to do it.103
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Because we’re looking at 96 per cent of our clientele being drug users, so as a result of that, all the time we’re dealing with legal issues with the clients. We do a lot of court support and we do a lot of prison support with that as well.104
One homeless participant described the value of this support to him:
I believe if people are given the support from before the time they go to court and during the court hearing itself, it just takes a lot of stress out. Like I have been to court on a number of occasions … going there has been a bit jittery but when I am there, and I know [caseworker] is there with me, it’s like, well I have got someone I know at least, so this is really good, I have got some help.105
In the current study, caseworkers and non-legal agencies reported supporting clients through the legal process by:
- assisting clients to put documentation together
- ensuring clients attend meetings with the solicitor
- explaining the process to the clients
- letting a person know that they were due in court that day and, in some cases, picking the person up and taking them to court
- providing clothing to go to court in
- attending court with the client as a support person and, if necessary, explaining what has happened in court that day
- assisting clients to meet appropriate conditions for bail
- assisting clients to adhere to legal outcomes.106
Consultations for this study suggest that the support offered by caseworkers and non-legal agencies can mean the difference between positive or negative legal outcomes for clients, if for no other reason than the worker can ensure the person attends court. The implications of not attending court are discussed in Chapter 8. Noting that the capacity of a service to provide court support depends upon resources, another welfare agency added:
… on a good day we can send someone. On a bad day we can’t and that can have an impact on the kind of quality of outcome that the client gets. And we have very little control over that because for us it is a resource issue.107
Supporting homeless clients with bail
Bail is an agreement to attend court to answer a criminal charge. As discussed in Chapter 8, homeless people can have difficulty being granted bail and adhering to bail conditions if bail has been granted. It appears that non-legal support services may assist people to stay out of prison pending a court hearing by providing appropriate accommodation to people on bail. For instance, Legal Aid NSW reported in this study using HPIC to find appropriate accommodation for homeless clients, in order to facilitate bail being granted.108 Welfare services also provide supervision and assessment and assist clients to comply with other bail conditions such as attending rehabilitation programs.109
Case management
The types of support described above have been presented as discrete activities undertaken by non-legal services. However, another valuable role played by non-legal services in supporting homeless clients is that of case management—that is, where the client’s legal needs are addressed as part of an holistic program that includes other related support issues. Such processes involve the caseworker assessing the client’s legal and other needs, referring clients to legal and other specialist services, coordinating the support of different service providers (e.g. housing, financial counselling, court support, AVOs) and providing advocacy and personal support as required.110 Research in Queensland highlighted the benefits of ‘continually engaging’ with homeless young people, rather than providing a series of short one-off periods of support as a young person drifts in and out of homelessness.111
Challenges to supporting clients through legal processes
All agencies deal with a limited range of issues, even though they recognise that where a range of issues exist, each issue needs to be addressed. Many health and welfare agencies are over-accessed and under-resourced and thus there are time constraints that apply to clients.112
The high level of support required by homeless clients to participate effectively in the legal process, may be beyond the resource capacity of some services to provide. Comments made at one of the roundtable discussions included:
Well, we actually keep ourselves short in the office department by sending people out to appointments with Centrelink or legal or any appointment so that’s the way to give them their cases, we do the same. We’re certainly not funded to do that, we don’t have the capacity to do that.
And from a service’s point of view, it’s a bit of a nightmare because I mean you’d understand most of us are community-based, we’re really stretched for resources and to send a worker for a whole day to go to court with someone is just a terrible waste of our resources. You know, especially if most of the day is just sitting around waiting for seven hours until the matter [is heard].113
In addition to the legal issues confronting their clients, workers themselves potentially face a number of legal issues relating to the provision of services to homeless people. One manager commented:
We need separate legal advice and it takes months to get any legal advice on some very basic issues. And I’m working under a cloud sometimes as a coordinator of a program, and I’m not sure whether I’m working within the law, outside the law. And I can’t get any advice.114
Workers interviewed for this study report facing a range of legal obligations, which they do not always fully understand and which affects their capacity to assist clients with legal issues. In the words of one worker interviewed:
I’ve got legal training and I’m not even sure of some of these issues myself. I mean I can see both points of view. I mean duty of care to clients clashing with clients’ rights to privacy and confidentiality for example. And statutory obligations to report this to the Commission of Serious Offences and whether in a professional relationship such as we have with our clients, whether those sections of the Crimes Act for example require us to report matters to the police … And another one that’s very important is that some of our clients are so unwell that they’re not capable of making rational decisions on their own behalf and then are we under some sort of legal obligation to have them put under the Protective Office, for example. Are we under a duty of care to do that?115
In some cases, workers’ concerns may be based on misunderstanding about legislation. For example, a government officer described misunderstandings about privacy legislation as follows:
Many of the workers believed that the Privacy Act … prevented them from helping their clients, and thus would not help clients based on their misunderstanding of the Act. In reality, workers can still help clients under the Privacy Act – it is more about knowing about the Act and how it can be used positively. This lack of education leads to confusion, and can lead to inadequate services.116
Other legal issues that workers consulted for this study said that they were unsure about included:
- workers’ statutory obligations to report serious offences they become aware of
- workers’ obligation to contact the Protective Commissioner when clients do not have the capacity at that point in time to make certain decisions (e.g. if their client suffers an acute psychotic episode)
- statutory restrictions to the assistance a worker can provide a person who may not have a valid visa
- the impact of privacy legislation (the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Privacy and Personal Information Act 1998 (NSW)) on the way workers communicate with other agencies about clients
- the difference between legal ‘information’ and ‘advice’ and the obligations entailed in each of these.117
Thus, while non-legal workers carry out a range of tasks that assist their homeless clients into and through legal processes, they reported a range of challenges in undertaking these duties. These difficulties may arise from a lack of adequate resources to undertake these tasks, as well as the workers need for more information about legal processes, services and options. This role becomes more complex when their clients face multiple and interrelated legal issues and if their clients have problems that effect their ability to make decisions about their legal issues. We now turn to strategies raised in consultations to address these concerns.
Supporting non-legal workers to assist homeless clients in legal processes
As indicated above, some caseworkers report feeling overstretched, vulnerable and poorly informed when supporting clients to address their legal needs. In consultations we asked caseworkers what would help them to support their homeless clients to address their legal issues. The following suggestions were offered.
Priority access to legal support
Some workers consulted for this study said that a legal advice ‘hotline’ would assist them in promptly assisting clients with urgent legal needs.118 As indicated below, there are some legal advice services available to caseworkers and other community workers. However, in this study we have not examined what proportion of community workers are aware of these services or how useful they find these services.
While CLCs often support non-legal agencies, the NSW Consumer Credit Legal Centre (CCLC) operates a dedicated telephone legal advice line for community workers, financial counsellors and government and community lawyers. Through this service community workers may obtain legal advice on behalf of their clients or guidance so that they can handle a client’s matter through their own service. The centre will also discuss referral options with workers.119
The Consumer Credit Legal Centre also provides a fairly formal process of ‘cooperative legal assistance to caseworkers’. CCLC:
will accept the referral of a client and handle their case exclusively. Often it will be appropriate for a [referring] worker to remain involved. The extent of this involvement may vary from a solicitor in a regional community legal centre who represents a client and obtains some guidance from our centre solicitors, to the situation where we handle the matter but ask the worker to obtain documents and statements from the client according to our instructions.
Most commonly, a financial counsellor or community worker may assist a client to self-represent by drafting letters, explaining legal processes and other essential tasks with assistance from Consumer Credit Legal Centre. This assistance may take the form of obtaining telephone advice at appropriate points in the process, and/or using the information and sample forms and letters provided by Consumer Credit Legal Centre.120
For general legal issues caseworkers can also call LawAccess, the statewide telephone legal advice and referral service described in Chapter 6. LawAccess can advise caseworkers on legal issues they face in dealing with their clients and, in certain circumstances, the actual legal issues of their clients. While the LawAccess policy is to speak directly to the client with the legal problem, in situations where the client lacks the capacity to speak directly or understand the advice, LawAccess will, with the permission of the client, talk to their caseworker. A limitation for caseworkers using LawAccess for urgent legal advice is that it operates in business hours only.
One caseworker was not in favour of telephone helplines, as he found the people giving advice over the telephone tended to be non-committal, providing only qualified advice.121 Workers in a regional area were also not in favour of central advice lines, as they felt that these services could not substitute local networking, and that the complexity of issues facing homeless clients means that issues are better addressed by information sharing though interagency forums.122
Other workers interviewed for this project preferred to rely on written legal resources such as The Law Handbook to guide the information and ‘advice’ they give. Citing the example of a kit produced by the Protective Commissioner’s Office, one worker suggested:
… it would be good if somebody could produce very simple, basic information kits, that would be of use to people working in our agencies, that would cover the basic areas of law that we are likely to encounter you know. Clients who are seeking an AVO or who have breached an AVO, what’s the procedure, what are their rights.123
‘Law for non-lawyers’: Training for caseworkers
Noting a lack of familiarity among caseworkers about legal processes and avenues of legal support, several agencies suggested that education and training seminars may be very beneficial.124 At one of the roundtable discussions, workers stated what they wanted.
… education … to gain the knowledge to support our clients and advocate for them, you know, at a stronger level in legal aspects, really because we’re just, you know, in the dark.
I agree with what somebody said about if you had a workshop, if somebody would give us a workshop for court procedures for welfare workers and social workers, I’d attend that. And I’d encourage every person that I work with to attend that. I really would.125
To the great credit of the Department of Housing and Homelessness Action Team, a few years ago they did run some seminars for the NGOs and they did give us some information about their policy criteria which I have found has been immensely helpful in dealing with the Department of Housing, because now when I’m dealing on behalf of a client with that department, I know what their criteria are and I can specifically address that with the department.126
An example of the type of training that non-legal workers appear to be requesting is that provided by Shopfront to youth workers in their area. The Principal Solicitor at Shopfront stated:
We can’t be everywhere at once, so part of ensuring that homeless young people get good legal support is to train the people who work with them. We are not trying to turn youth workers into lawyers, but aim to give them the ability to recognise a legal problem, make appropriate referrals and support their clients throughout the legal process (e.g. by writing court reports or giving evidence). We also teach youth workers about their obligations in terms of confidentiality, duty of care, reporting child abuse, dealing with the police, etc.127
Most CLCs, ALSs and Legal Aid NSW also undertake community legal education, with some providing specialised training for community workers and agencies working with disadvantaged people.128 Government agencies such as Centrelink also provide information to community groups and workers.129 However, the level of awareness among workers about the availability of different training and community legal education programs and the accessibility and utility of these education programs to community workers were not specifically examined this study.
Conclusion
Non-legal workers can significantly enhance the capacity of homeless clients to identify and address their legal issues. However, workers indicated in this study that they require support in the form of legal information, access to legal advice and further training to perform this role. Legal issues of particular interest to their roles as caseworkers/community workers include various statutory reporting requirements, the impact of privacy legislation on communication about clients with other agencies, and the limitations and responsibilities on advice given by non-legal practitioners on legal issues. It appears that there are some legal advice services available to caseworkers. However, it also seems, on the basis of our consultations, that the level of awareness of these services among workers is variable.
Another strategy that workers report as highly beneficial to legal and non-legal agencies, staff and homeless clients is increased communication and coordination between legal and non-legal service providers, particularly at the local level. The need to include homeless people and local communities in these networks to ensure that services devised actually respond to the clients needs was also stressed.130 This involves including homeless people in the planning and ongoing review of services. Coordinating legal and non-legal services is discussed in detail below.
Bringing legal and non-legal workers to assist homeless clients in legal processes
A key message of the 2003 Beyond the Divide national conference on homelessness was:
Collaboration and integration between stakeholders remains critical to the improvement of services to homeless people, and to bring about the policy and program integration required to prevent and address homelessness.131
Further, the summary report of the conference stated in support of this conclusion:
Research presented by Hanover Welfare Services captured the fundamental importance of working across and within service systems to address homelessness by producing powerful evidence to demonstrate that current separate responses to discrete aspects of disadvantage (e.g. income, housing, employment) produce poor outcomes for homeless people aged 18–35.132
The data presented up to this point have demonstrated that legal and other issues homeless people face are often intertwined and not easily resolved by a single agency. As such, the current and other studies suggest that the issues may be best dealt with in a holistic manner, and that this is more feasible if agencies are working in coordination to support the clients. One worker commented:
So it’s having a central team or information services or something like that, where you’re connecting with, where all services are connecting with this, so there’s a better understanding of what’s happening.133
This is consistent with Scott and Sage, who reported: “working with other agencies emerged as an important factor assisting participants to deliver services to clients with legal problems”.134 However, coordination between agencies is not without its challenges, particularly with groups with multiple needs such as the homeless.135
However, that said, several interagency projects and programs have had positive outcomes for homeless people.136 In the current study, the following suggestions were provided to increase communication and coordination between legal and non-legal services.
Networking between legal and non-legal agencies
The problems [of homeless people] are not just legal—they’re massive. I think any legal clinic’s got to have the links into all of us [homeless person’s services] sitting round the table.137
It was clear from caseworkers and agencies consulted in this project that networking between agencies, particularly at the local level, was highly valued.138 Suggestions to improve coordination and cooperation between agencies included:
- more formalised communication mechanisms
- agencies working together on projects to address client needs
- establishing networks of homeless service providers in a local area
- shared training and development in legal issues/referrals.139
Newcastle was one area visited as part of this project where homeless services had formed a network, namely, the Newcastle Hunter Homeless Interagency Network (NHHIN). The network includes accommodation services, welfare agencies, DOH offices, the tenancy service, Centrelink offices, Hunter Community Justice Centre, local councils and mental health and family and community services, among others and since 2004, the Hunter Community Legal Centre. The NHHIN is currently coordinated by the McKenzie Centre, run by Mission Australia.140 The network has been developing a model that provides outreach to homeless clients and then coordinates service delivery to meet the diverse needs of those clients.141
At a broader level, the NSW government’s Better Service Delivery Program is another project that aims to improve communication and coordination and facilitate more effective referrals between human service agencies in this State. It includes an online directory of human services, as well as electronic systems and other mechanisms to facilitate and streamline referrals between agencies. The program involves both government and non-government agencies.142
Networking and formal liaisons between agencies both at the local level and the State level may facilitate better coordination between legal and non-legal services. At the State level, it appears, however, that legal services in particular are not always included in networks with other human services. For instance, at this stage the BSDP does not appear to involve legal services (such as Legal Aid NSW, the local courts, Chamber Magistrates Service, LawAccess). Further, the Partnership against Homelessness, a partnership of state government agencies to address homelessness in NSW, does not include the Attorney General’s Department or its relevant sections (e.g. local courts, LawAccess).
Co-location and coordination of services
A key feature of the specialised homeless persons legal services described in Chapter 6 (e.g. LCRC, HPLS, Shopfront and the legal clinics at Lou’s Place and Exodus) is that they are located in or near generalist homeless or other welfare/community services. In addition, Legal Aid and some CLCs provide advice clinics at neighbourhood centres and other outreach locations. Chapter 6 argued that this co-location of legal and other support services improved accessibility to legal assistance for certain sectors of the homeless population. Thus, this model provides another means for improving the coordination of legal and non-legal service delivery.
The evaluation report of the VPILCH HPLC has described the relationship between their legal and the generalist services as follows:
The Clinic model relies on collaboration with a number of agencies that work with people affected by homelessness. The vast majority of initial contact by clients with the Clinic is on referral from the agencies, and the agencies host the lawyers at their premises. With variations, agency roles identified during the evaluation included:
- hosting the Clinic sessions at the agency;
- promoting the Clinic to possible clients;
- making appointments for clients;
- advising team leaders of client bookings prior to each Clinic session;
- supporting clients to interviews with lawyers, including in some cases, attending the interview with the client;
- follow up and liaison with the team leaders and lawyers on behalf of clients;
- providing feedback about the Clinic;
- participation in the systemic advocacy/law reform work of the Clinic;
- provision of training to Clinic lawyers; and
- participation in education and training opportunities provided by the Clinic.
The Clinic could not operate without the agencies.143
According to that report, the non-legal agencies that hosted the VPILCH HPLC also considered it a sustainable arrangement and useful means by which they could be involved in law reform processes. They also appreciated the opportunity to facilitate direct contact between their clients and the lawyers. The development of trust and rapport between all parties concerned was also cited as an important benefit. Finally, the fact that the clinic was relatively self-sufficient (and thus not a drain on the agencies’ resources) was also cited as a crucial aspect to the success of the collaboration.144 One limitation raised in the roundtable discussions of placing legal services in welfare services was the potential perception that the legal service may lack independence from the sponsoring welfare agency and concerns about confidentiality arising from this. One worker stated:
We have some wonderful NGOs that provide … legal services and they are fantastic, but a lot of the people that we work with tell us that they won’t access those because they are concerned that … if they go to a [NGO-based] legal service that somehow the [NGO] is going to find out about their legal issues and that may jeopardise their accommodation or their relationship with that service … we work fairly hard to say, well look, it’s staffed by independent solicitors from different services, who won’t report back, but it’s this big brother mentality that the guys have got, that they’re being tracked.145
A perceived lack of independence may also be problematic if the client has a legal issue concerning the host agency. On this point, the evaluation report of the VPILCH HPLC also cautioned:
The team acknowledged that, even though they sought the prior permission of the client for the caseworker to sit in on the interviews, the client may not feel completely free to refuse, given that they are usually reliant on the Agency for accessing other services.146
Thus, in summary, this ‘one-stop shop’ model of legal and non-legal services for homeless people addresses a number of the barriers they face in accessing legal and other support. It allows homeless people to access a range of services at one physical location and provides legal service that specifically caters for the complex needs of the client. Co-location also provides scope for a holistic approach to the client’s needs, where the legal and non-legal services can work together to address the client’s legal and other needs. The early experiences of the HPLSs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane suggest that there may be real benefits to clients of this one-stop shop approach to supporting homeless clients.
Conclusion
Recognising that homeless people live in diverse circumstances and may not approach legal services when they have a legal problem, this chapter has examined the non-legal support and services that are accessed by homeless people in NSW. These services may be viewed as possible sites for legal assistance or referral.
The study found that non-legal service providers, particularly SAAP services, are a key link between people experiencing homelessness and legal assistance services. However, some people who become and remain homeless are isolated from SAAP and other homeless person’s services. This group of homeless people may only turn to family and friends or more general services such as Centrelink, doctors or health services or schools for advice. In this context, it was recognised that if these general services are to refer clients to appropriate legal assistance, the message given to these agencies must be made as direct and simple as possible. One option for consideration is the wide distribution of the LawAccess contact number. This involves increasing general community awareness of the service as well as directing information to the types of agencies and services discussed earlier in this chapter. Another option is to consider telephone access points to LawAccess, in places such as Centrelink waiting areas. LawAccess can provide legal information and advice by telephone, and link people with local face-to-face legal services (see Chapter 6). An added benefit in using LawAccess as a referral point to legal services is that it may cut down the number of times a person is referred from place to place, reducing the prospect of referral fatigue.
This chapter has also highlighted the vital but often overlooked role that non-legal service providers, particularly those in the homeless service sector, often play in assisting homeless clients through legal processes. Non-legal workers may provide legal information and advice about legal processes, assist homeless clients to obtain or complete relevant documentation, refer clients to legal assistance and, when necessary, accompany clients to appointments, explain legal processes or legal advice provided, support clients in court, and assist clients with legal outcomes, such as obtaining and staying on bail. Specialist services such as tenancy services and court support workers also provide skilled, specific advocacy and support services.
As indicated in Chapter 5 and in Chapter 8 following, homeless people require significant support to engage in legal processes and manage the outcomes. Homeless people and other stakeholders consulted in this study reported the benefits of receiving support though legal process from non-legal workers. However, non-legal workers and services need to be resourced and supported to provide this support in a sustainable way. In this study, workers identified a need for access to timely legal information, legal advice and relevant legal ‘education’. Workers also stress the significant benefits of interagency collaboration for legal service providers, non-legal service providers and, most importantly, their homeless clients. This is consistent both with the views of legal service providers as found in Chapter 6 as well as directions highlighted in current policy and research: in short, that homeless people benefit from legal and non-legal services that are coordinated, with a focus on clients’ total needs.