A new report by Eastern Community Legal Centre has revealed that significant disadvantage experienced by residents of Bulleen is leading to higher rates of legal issues requiring assistance.

ECLC established the Bulleen Legal Outreach Service in 2010 with the support of a Community Development Grant from Manningham City Council. The outreach provides legal advice and assistance to residents in Manningham who are unable to attend the Box Hill Office and quite early in the development of the service, ECLC commenced an evaluation project to ensure the outreach met the legal needs of the local community.

The ‘Bulleen Outreach Service Evaluation’ report released this month highlights key legal issues experienced by Bulleen and surrounding communities including high rates of family violence, complex debt and infringement matters and housing and tenancy issues. A majority of clients who sought support from the Outreach service were on low incomes and many had not previously accessed legal support. The evaluation revealed that the Bulleen Outreach was addressing these issues and barriers to a great extent by adopting a community development model and developing a strong partnership with the local neighbourhood house and other key service providers.

The final report makes a series of recommendations as follows:

• That the Bulleen Legal Outreach service be ongoing and secured by a more sustainable funding source, in recognition of the importance of a locally based accessible service.
• That the Bulleen Legal Outreach service increase the number of days of operation to be able to better serve the local community and respond more immediately to clients in crisis.
• That a Supported Legal Case Manager model be explored to work with clients with complex needs.
• That ECLC continue to foster relationships with key services to ensure that disadvantaged members of the community are referred appropriately.
• That ECLC continue to target Community Legal Education to community services and groups in Manningham to raise awareness of relevant legal services.
• That ECLC continue to work closely with Family Violence services in the region.
• That ECLC target Community Legal Education to reflect legal needs of the Manningham community as identified by services and residents in the region.

ECLC thanks Manningham City Council and BATCH for their support of this outreach service.

To make an appointment for legal advice in Bulleen, please contact ECLC on 9285 4822.

Attachment:

Bulleen Outreach Service – Evaluation and Research Report

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2011 at 11:15 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.