RESIDENTS of the city of Whittlesea will get free specialist legal
help following a unique agreement between Victoria Legal Aid (VLA) and
the local community legal centre.
Specialist legal-aid lawyers will provide free services in
criminal, civil, family, youth and children’s law at Whittlesea
Community Connections (WCC), which runs the community legal service in
Epping.
The agreement is the first of its kind between VLA and a community legal centre, according to VLA spokeswoman Meagan Keogh.
The move follows the closure of the VLA’s Preston office – the nearest to Whittlesea – earlier this year.
Ms Keogh said the new legal-aid services “recognised the significant and growing legal need in the Whittlesea region”.
“We know that many people either don’t realise they have a legal problem or seek advice from other professionals,” she said.
“By co-locating our services with other community services, we can
help to reduce one barrier to people getting the legal services they
need, especially for the most vulnerable members of the community.”
Ms Keogh said VLA wanted to provide a more co-ordinated and
integrated legal service to communities and the agreement with the
Whittlesea legal service was the first of a number of agreements it
expected to sign with other agencies in Melbourne’s north-east. WCC
chief executive officer Jemal Ahmet said it was important to match
people with the correct legal and non-legal services quickly.
“We run a number of important community services, including
[migrant] settlement services, emergency relief, community transport, a
volunteer resource service and a community legal centre,” he said.
“So when people come to us with other problems, they can now also get the help they need with more specialist legal advice.”
VLA gave the Whittlesea Community Legal Service an extra $50,000
funding last month to provide more legal services, as well as an
additional $67,653 to help people facing family violence in culturally
and linguistically diverse communities.
