Seniors take law into their own hands
Legal Aid services part of the solution to elder abuse, writes Patrick Lunn
THE
Legal Aid Commission of Tasmania is extremely proud of the lead role we have taken in dealing with the emerging issue of elder abuse in the Tasmanian community.
I say “emerging” because we know the issue has existed for a very long time, but our elderly are now becoming more confident, through the right avenues, to come forward and voice their concerns.
Legal Aid, in partnership with Advocacy Tasmania, has developed an alliance to provide a seamless service for the elderly, including information, support, advocacy, legal assistance and referral to other services.
In partnership with COTA, Council on The Ageing, we have set up the state’s first legal outreach clinic for the elderly.
This is already achieving great success, with elderly people able to come to a private clinic where confidentiality is assured and we can try to find solutions to their problems.
Legal Aid Tasmania doesn’t just treat the legal problem, but connects clients to other services they need to turn their lives around.
These include financial counselling, drug and alcohol treatment, mental health services, emergency housing, positive lifestyle courses, anger management courses and employment services. We do about 10,000 referrals a year.
Legal Aid is extremely excited about services we will be launching this year.
These include: Online legal chat: Tasmanians will be able to chat online with a Legal Aid lawyer and get legal information in real time, on any mobile device or desktop computer. Continued rollout of our video telephone network in community centres around the state. We already have video telephones in New Norfolk, Geeveston, Cygnet, Flinders Island and Nubeena and we are looking to place them in another 10 sites.
These video telephones improve access to justice by enabling Tasmanians in remote and regional areas to be faceto-face with a Legal Aid lawyer for free advice. Fifteen YouTube videos, each three minutes long, on our website with legal information. A health/justice partnership with Legal Aid lawyers visiting a large medical centre each week. Surveys show Tasmanians manage nearly half of all legal problems without consulting a professional. Legal Aid Tasmania will take the law to where it is needed. Forging closer ties to agencies that service people with a disability. A project to bring Legal Aid Tasmania closer to GPs. We want to take our services to those hard-to-reach clients who are not consulting a lawyer about their legal problem. We know from contacts within the health industry that many patients confide in their GPs about all their problems, including legal issues.
Overall, Legal Aid expects to see in the 2017-18 financial year the delivery of a record number of services, as the first six months have shown significant increases compared to the same period in 2016.
Already, we have done 262 Family Dispute Resolutions, from July 1 to December 31, 2017, compared to 370 for the entire previous financial year.
These mediations have a 93 per cent settlement or success rate and save thousands of court hours, which would otherwise be spent on hearings concerning high-conflict disputes between parents over living arrangements for children. Every one of those 262 mediations represents a better outcome for a Tasmanian child.
Our duty lawyer services are up 47 per cent in 2017 compared to the same period in 2016. We did 2654 duty lawyer services in the first six months of the financial year, that’s 2654 Tasmanians helped at court who would otherwise have been self-represented, which only leads to the frustration of magistrates and more court appearances.
Our telephone helpline calls are up 4 per cent compared to the same six months last year. We have given free legal advice to 7598 callers. This service is not means tested and is available to all Tasmanians. It plays a valuable role in resolving disputes before they escalate into major problems.
We are pleased our web page views are up 10 per cent to 251,793 from July 1 to December 31. Our website is an authoritative source of legal information for the community. It is intuitive, adapts to any screen size, has literacy support functions and is available in 93 different languages.