Establishing the Mid NorthCoast
Community Legal Centre

Report to Legal Aid NSW


Establishing the Mid NorthCoast Community Legal Centre

Report to Legal Aid NSW

Contents

Executive Summary...... 1

1. Introduction...... 4
2. The Level and Distribution of Legal Need in the Mid NorthCoast Region 6
3. Selection Criteria...... 32
4. Selection Criteria for the EOI Process...... 38
Appendices...... 41

Executive Summary

  1. The Commonwealth and Legal Aid NSW have made available $310,000 per annum to support a community legal centre (CLC) in the Mid North Coast (MNC) of NSW. This funding is sufficient to employ approximately 3 full time staff including at least one solicitor.
  2. The Centre’s catchment area will be the Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Kempsey, Hastings-Port Macquarie and Greater Taree. The three LGAs together have a population of approximately 145,000 people. The population of the area is growing faster than the NSW average.
  3. Legal Aid NSW will call soon for expressions of interest from organisations interested in operating the CLC.
  4. Legal Aid NSW has commissioned this report to identify legal need, and consider service delivery and location of the new MNC CLC, in order to recommend selection criteria to be included in that call for expressions of interest. In preparing the report we have reviewed available demographic information, data on legal need and relevant literature, and consulted 45 representatives of legal and social service providers as well as some other people from the region.
  5. Each of the three LGAs in the catchment area – Greater Taree, Hastings-Port Macquarie and Kempsey – has a higher SEIFA level of disadvantage than the NSW average, with Kempsey being the most disadvantaged of the three and Hastings-Port Macquarie the least disadvantaged. All three LGAs have higher rates of unemployment and disability and a higher proportion of the population in receipt of Centrelink benefits than the NSW average. They have much lower rates of people from CALD backgrounds than the NSW average.
  6. The Kempsey and Greater Taree LGAs have significantly higher rates of Indigenous residents, welfare recipients, domestic violence, victims of crime and sole parent families than the NSW average and than the Hastings-Port Macquarie LGA.
  7. Each of the three LGAs has a much higher rate of people over 45 than the NSW average, with Port Macquarie having a particularly high rate of people over 65.
  8. Data on expressed legal need (that is legal services currently being provided) in the three LGAs shows high numbers of family law matters and a large number of matters relating to prisoners in Kempsey due to the Mid Coast Correctional Centre’s presence in that LGA. Wills /estates is the highest civil matter-type recorded by service providers in the catchment area.
  9. Considering the data and views of people consulted, we suggest that the priority demographic groups for the MNC CLC are:
  • Indigenous people,
  • People with disabilities,
  • Single parents,
  • Young people, especially those at risk of offending,
  • People who are homeless,
  • Financially disadvantaged older people, and
  • Prisoners and their families, in relation to their civil and family law issues, particularly just before and on release.
  1. There are unmet legal needs across a wide range of areas of civil and family law and some areas of criminal law. The most pressing unmet legal need that the community legal centre can readily meet is for face-to-face advice and minor assistance in all areas of civil law relevant to disadvantaged people. There is also significant unmet need in relation to family law advice and minor assistance. The MNC CLC will need to find a way to provide or assist clients to obtain initial family law advice but ensure that the demand for family law services does not overwhelm other key priorities.
  2. There is significant legal need in other parts of the Mid North Coast outside the primary catchment area for the MNC CLC, in particular in Forster-Tuncurry and the NambuccaValley.
  3. The key priorities for the MNC CLC should be:
  • to provide accessible face-to-face legal advice and minor assistance services,
  • to provide training and telephone support to social services about legal issues faced by their clients,
  • to assist disadvantaged clients locate and use the legal service most appropriate to their needs, and
  • to develop new services in the region to respond to high priority unmet legal needs.
  1. The MNC CLC should prioritise civil law legal issues relevant to disadvantaged client groups, but should work with other legal and possibly social service providers to develop strategies to increase access to family law legal services, and should have the capacity to provide initial family law advice, especially where no other service is available.
  2. The MNC CLC should systematically explore specific local instances of legal need (for example the needs of former prisoners on release from the Mid North Coast Correctional Centre).
  3. The MNC CLC should explore the feasibility of using pro bono/volunteer lawyers from the private profession to provide services at a legal advice clinic in Port Macquarie.
  4. The MNC CLC should consider the costs and benefits of creating opportunities for law students from Newcastle and/or New EnglandUniversities to assist staff in providing legal services.
  5. Wherever the MNC CLC has its main location, it should provide weekly face-to-face legal advice services in each of the three LGAs that make up the primary catchment area.
  6. While both Kempsey and Taree LGAs have a higher proportion of disadvantaged residents with legal need, there are practical and other reasons why Port Macquarie is probably a better location for the legal service. Location at Kempsey might also be considered.
  7. The MNC CLC and its funding body should ensure that strategies are in place to avoid the real risk that services are disproportionately provided to residents of Hastings-Port Macquarie LGA.
  8. The MNC CLC should investigate and if warranted trial and evaluate different ways to provide legal services to a range of locations. In doing so it should actively learn from the experience of other legal service providers in particular the CLCs based in Lismore, Armidale and Nowra.
  9. The call for expressions of interest in operating the MNC CLC should include selection criteria that assist potential service operators and the funding agencies to ensure that the MNC CLC is:
  • able to meet the priority unmet legal needs identified in this report,
  • encouraged and able to develop new services in response to increasing understandings of local unmet legal needs and the opportunities to improve services,
  • able to provide services equitably throughout the catchment area, and
  • operated subject to appropriate governance practices.
  1. Legal Aid NSW should make this report available to assist potential applicants respond to the request for expressions of interest and to assist the successful applicant establish the service.

1. Introduction

Background

The Commonwealth and NSW governments have announced funding to support a community legal service to serve the mid NorthCoast region of NSW. Total funding for the centre will be $310,000 per annum.

The funding bodies have agreed that the primary catchment area for the community legal service will be the Kempsey, Port Macquarie-Hastings and Greater Taree local government areas.

The funding will be provided through the NSW Community Legal Centre Funding Program administered by Legal Aid NSW.

Community organisations and local government in the mid NorthCoast have advocated for a CLC to be established since at least 2003 and probably since 1998. Some notes on past advocacy are contained in Appendix C to this report.

This Project

The Commonwealth Community Legal Services Program (CCLSP) Guidelines note that selection of a new service provider using funding within the program is managed ‘typically through a tender process which is advertised in local and national newspapers.’ As program manager for NSW, Legal Aid NSW intends to call for Expressions of Interest in establishing and operating the Mid North Coast community legal centre later in 2010.

Legal Aid NSW has engaged consultants, Gordon Renouf and Polly Porteous, to provide advice in relation to:

  • legal need including the demographic and geographic distribution of need,
  • legal priorities for the service, including demographic priorities,
  • selection criteria for the expression of interest process, and
  • the ideal location for the service, including the most appropriate base and any locations that might be serviced through outreach (based on evidence on the distribution of legal need).

The consultants were also asked to make observations about the readiness of organisations that may express interest in operating the service.

The consultants were asked to provide their advice based on:

  • a review of relevant data and literature,
  • consultation with representatives of existing legal and non-legal service providers in or to the region, and
  • consultation with a small number of similarly sized or located community legal centres.

The terms of reference for the project are at Appendix A.

Consultations

The following people and organisations have been consulted:

  • 12 head office and regional staff from Legal AidNSW,
  • five head office and regional staff from the NSW and ACT Aboriginal Legal Service,
  • the chair of the state representative body for community legal centres,
  • four staff of the three community legal centres located in adjacent rural/regional areas,
  • the President of the Mid North Coast Regional Law Society,
  • LawAccess NSW and the National Children’s and Youth Legal Centre, and
  • 36 other people living and/or working in the three LGAs to be served by the CLC, mainly staff of 22 service provider organisations.

Further details on consultations are provided in Appendix B.

The Community Legal Services Program

The Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department funds the Commonwealth Community Legal Services Program. The objective of the program is “to contribute to the provision of access to legal assistance services for disadvantaged members of the community and those with special needs and/or those whose interests should be protected as a matter of public interest through the provision of funding to community-based organisations.”[1]

The NSW government also funds community legal centres. The Commonwealth and State funding in NSW is managed as one program by Legal Aid NSW. Funded services are required to enter into a standard Service Agreement and comply with the CCLSP Guidelines.

CLCs are one component of Australia’s legal aid system. Australian governments have entered into a National Partnership Agreement on Legal Assistance Services, which among other things aims to achieve “greater collaboration and cooperation between legal assistance providers themselves and with other service providers to ensure clients receive ‘joined up’ service provision to address legal and other problems.”[2] Funded CLCs are expected to work collaboratively and cooperatively with other service providers.

Community Legal Centres in NSW

There are 39 organisations that belong to Community Legal Centres NSW. Of the 39 centres, 19 are locality-based generalist community legal services located in metropolitan and regional areas and 19 are specialist services[3], most of which serve the entire state. Of the generalist services, 10 are located outside the Sydney metropolitan area in Wollongong, Katoomba, Wyong, Newcastle, Lismore, Armidale, Dubbo, Broken Hill,Nowra and Wodonga (serving Albury and region).

CLCs operate programs funded through the NSW Community Legal Services Program to provide generalist and specialist legal services, family violence legal services, welfare rights services, and disability discrimination services. CLCs often also obtain funding from other sources on a recurrent or project basis to provide additional services. These services include tenancy advocacy, consumer credit legal services, financial counselling services and women’s domestic violence court assistance services.

The Commonwealth Community Legal Centres Program Guidelines provide that funded community legal centresare expected to meet the program objectives by undertaking core service activities to assist “clients and communities to access responsive, respectful,understandable and useful services in relation to legal issues.”[4] The Guidelines further provide that “[c]ore service activities include the provision of information and referrals, advice and casework on legal or related matters, and undertaking of community legal education and law reform activities. CLCs funded under the Program are required to provide a range of reports and data so that the Department can monitor, manage and account for output delivery and the achievement of the Program objective.”[5]

2. The Level and Distribution of Legal Need in the Mid North Coast Region

Introduction

The CCLSP Guidelines provide that funded community legal centres are (among other things) required “to provide core service activities in accordance with the needs of their target client groups”.

In selecting the preferred tenderer, the funding bodies should assess applicants’ ability to respond to the unmet legal needs of target client groups in the region. In operating its service the MNC CLC should have regard to various sources of information to assess the legal needs that it should respond to. We imagine that the non-confidential parts of this report could usefully be made available to the successful tenderer.

This section of the report considers the following information in order to identify unmet legal needs that the CLC should or might respond to:

  1. The demographic characteristics of the region,
  2. Research undertaken into legal need Australia and overseas,
  3. Data on current service delivery,
  4. The availability and capacity of current legal services and related non-legal services (tenancy advice, financial counselling, disability advocacy and domestic violence support in particular), and
  5. The views of representatives of current legal and social services providers to the region.

The Mid North Coast region

The mid north Coast Region is defined in several different ways. The Australian Bureau of Statistic’s Statistical Division includes the LGAs of Clarence Valley, Coffs Harbour, Bellingen, Nambucca, Kempsey, Hastings, Greater Taree, and Lord Howe Island. Various NSW Government departments extend this definition to include the Great Lakes LGA.[6]

The Mid North Coast Community Legal Centre Project (a grouping of local organisations and individuals) has undertaken work on the basis that the mid north coast should not include Lord Howe Island and the Clarence Valley (the latter is included in the catchment area for the Lismore based Northern Rivers Community Legal Centre) but that it should include the Great Lakes LGA.

The funding bodies have determined, presumably in light of the relatively small amount of funding available, that the Mid North Coast Community Legal Centre should provide services to the three large central LGAs in this area, namely Kempsey, Hastings Port Macquarie and Greater Taree.

Demographic Characteristics of the region

Table 1 provides selected demographic information for each of the three LGAs and some individual towns in the catchment area and corresponding data for NSW as a whole. The table includes the level of socio-economic disadvantage (SEIFA index) for each LGA: the lower the SEIFA index (below 1000), the higher the disadvantage. More detailed demographic information at the level of towns and districts of the catchment area is contained in Appendix D.

Where relevant, the table shows the types of legal problem that people with particular demographic characteristics are likely to experience, based on one analysis of available legal needs research.[7]

The key conclusions in relation to the demographic information are:

  • Each of the three LGAs in the catchment areas has a level of disadvantage higher than the NSW average, with Kempsey being the more disadvantaged and Hastings Port Macquarie the least disadvantaged of the three. However it should be noted that SEIFA scores at the level of an LGA can hide significant variations between smaller districts within the LGA. So the SEIFA score for Hastings-Port Macquarie LGA masks significant pockets of disadvantage in the LGA, including in parts of Port Macquarie town: see Appendix D for a closer analysis of these pockets of disadvantage.
  • All three LGAs have higher rates of unemployment and disability and a higher proportion of the population in receipt of Centrelink benefits than the NSW average. They have much lower rates of people from CALD backgrounds than the NSW average.
  • The Kempsey and Greater Taree LGAs have a significantly higher proportion of Indigenous residentsthan the NSW average and than the Hastings-Port Macquarie LGA.
  • The Kempsey and Greater Taree LGAs also have rates of domestic violence, victims of crime and sole parent families significantly higher than the NSW average, and higher than the Hastings-Port Macquarie LGA.
  • Each of the LGAs has a much higher rate of people over 45 than the NSW average, with Port Macquarie having a particularly high rate of people over 65. Kempsey and Greater Taree have a somewhat higher proportion of younger people aged 5 to 14 than the NSW average.

Table 1: Selected demographic and legal needs data[8]