Durbach, Andrea --- "Law for All: An .Analysis of Legal Needs in Inner Sydney Today by Inner City Legal Centre, Kingsford Legal Centre, Marrickville Legal Centre and Redfern Legal Centre" [2000] AltLawJl 115; (2000) 25(6) Alternative Law Journal 312

• Reviews
• Law For All
• An Analysis of Legal Needs in Inner Sydney Today

Reviews

Law For All
An Analysis of Legal Needs in Inner Sydney Today

by Inner City Legal Centre, Kingsford Legal Centre, Marrickville Legal

Centre, Redfern Legal Centre, 2000.

In recent years, pressure from government departments and funding agencies has driven community legal centres (CLCs) towards a relentless and time-consuming demonstration that they provide 'good value for money'. This pressure has been accompanied by Commonwealth cuts to legal aid and community organisations and a parallel increase in reliance on CLC services. CLCs are required to 'do more with less' and centre workers are diverted away from core centre activities in order to comply with 'overly bureaucratic monitoring and reporting requirements'. The requirements emphasise quantity in the form of outputs, as opposed to qualitative outcomes. Time to undertake essential evaluations of community legal needs and the capacity to address them, is inevitably reduced.

For this reason and many others, some of which are outlined below, an analysis of legal needs in Sydney in 1999 by four inner Sydney generalist community legal centres -Inner City Legal Centre, Kingsford Legal Centre, Marrickville Legal Centre, Redfern Legal Centre - and their resultant report, Law for All, is to be com­ mended. A comprehensive, concise and opportune report, Law for All offers invaluable information and analysis which have application beyond the four centres and the communities that form the focus of the study. Initiated in the context of an impending review by the Commonwealth of CLCs in New South Wales during 2000/2001 (similar reviews have occurred in Victoria South Australia and Queensland), the specific objectives of the study were to:

• undertake a needs analysis of the inner Sydney region and map existing services in the area;

• identify gaps in service provision, with particular reference to the nexus between legal aid services and those provided by CLCs;

• identify likely trends in future demand through an examination of emerging legal and social needs and make recommendations for future action.

The study took the form of structured interviews with a range of workers from generalist and specialist CLCs, community organisations, government agencies, the NSW Legal Aid Commission, specialist support ser­ vices and members of the private legal profession. In addition, demographic data about the geographical areas ser­ viced by the four inner Sydney CLCs was collated and analysed. In measuring community legal need the study cites key socio/economic indicators which tend to contribute to unmet legal need including unemployment, family breakdown, transient populations, urbanisation, cultural diversity and low literacy skills. Importantly, the study identifies 'hidden communities' whose needs, whilst shaped by these key socio/economic indicators, are accentuated given their invisibility and the financial and other barriers which restrict or prohibit their access to legal services. The report suggests that it is the needs of these hidden communities - younger people with disabilities, people from a non-English speaking background (NESB) with mental health disabilities, transgender people, people with brain injuries, sweat shop workers -which offer a significant challenge for all CLCs as they redefine traditional notions of community and legal need. The study points out that the growing emergence of these needs in the context of diminishing resources available to service them, requires CLCs to adopt strategic, resource-efficient interventions which can combine in effective ways to both articulate and address hid­ den needs.

While Law for All profiles the four inner Sydney CLCs and the communities in which they are located, the report identifies features endemic to CLCs in general which illustrate the extent to which their services are responsive to community need:

• accessible services in terms of opening hours, facilities for people with disabilities, and for people from NESB communities through the use of interpreters;

• appropriate and directed community legal education to these groups;

• innovative strategies that are responsive to changes in the community and that meet the needs of communities facing particular barriers in ac­ cessing traditional legal services;

• valuable community development by auspicing, for example, services such as the Gay and Lesbian Advice Service and Prisoners Legal Service and spawning other centres such as the Consumer Credit Legal Centre;

• partnerships between the private le­ gal profession and local communities by utilising the services offered by volunteer lawyers;

• a voice for communities who are of­ ten unheard, particularly via policy work and campaigns;

• a comprehensive service by assisting clients in dealing with all the issues associated with the legal problem in a practical and supportive way, for example, linking people with debt counselling services, liaising with Centrelink, assisting women in finding refuge accommodation when fleeing domestic violence, and undertaking home visits for elderly, disabled or housebound clients.

Given the generalist nature of the work of the four centres profiled, their objectives, coverage of issues and their approaches inevitably overlap. What is interesting however, is the distinctive nature of each centre, their diversity of histories, the design of the services offered which primarily reflect the mix of the communities each centre serves. As an intended resource for a review of the centres concerned, the report serves its central objective well. Perhaps more importantly, Law for All demonstrates how CLCs remain central to ensuring the cohesion and vitality of communities that increasingly confront threats to their political, social, cultural and economic life as services are reduced, resources diverted and channels for community participation and government accountability are narrowed.

ANDREA DURBACH

Andrea Durbach is Director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Sydney.

Available from Kingsford Legal Centre, II Rainbow Street, Kingsford NSW 2032, tel [phone] or fax [phone]. Free of charge.