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Local CLC Impact Report

​​Local CLC provides free legal help to anyone in who lives, works or studies in the Local area, or otherwise has a connection to this community. Our services are designed to be appropriate to the needs of the Local community, and effective so that they have a positive impact for clients.

Working with our Local community

Local CLC is able to provide holistic support to our clients through developing and maintaining strong relationships with Local community organisations.

Working collaboratively with community partner organisations involves:

• Providing community legal education​
• Working with Local community partners so that they are well equipped to link the Local community into our client services.

The impact we are seeking to achieve through this work is that our community has:

• increased legal knowledge and education
• increased access to services that meet their legal needs.

Our activities

Community legal education

Our community legal education (CLE) program at Local CLC includes:
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• Legal education session at schools in preparation for Year 12 students attending Schoolies week
• Self-Help Kit on writing affidavits for children’s matters in the Family Court
• Information workshop for workers at the Local Domestic Violence Service about assisting women to apply for a domestic violence order (DVO).

Project Name	Activity Type	Area of Law	Geographic Location	Target Audience	Number of People	Number of Resources
Schoolies Week Talks	Legal information sessions	Criminal justice	Local Community State High School	Year 12 students	200	N/A
Self-Help Kit	Resource	Family law	Local community	Unrepresented parties in Family Court	N/A	75
DVO Workshop	Legal information session	Domestic violence	Local DV Service	Local DV Service employees and volunteers	10	N/A

Community relationships
 
Local CLC works closely with our community partners, which include:
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• Warm referral pathway with the Local DV Service, Local Legal Aid office, and Local Aboriginal Service which provide priority access to these clients
• Participation in the Local Regional Legal Assistance Forum
• Participation in the Local Family Law Pathways network
• Active member of the Queensland Consumer Alliance network.

What our community partners say

We asked our community partners about the impact our work had on their ability to assist clients to access our service.

There were 10 respondents to our community partners survey. All of the respondents to the survey work with Local CLC to either provide referrals to our CLC, or accept referrals from our CLC. There were no respondents that worked with us to provide legal education in the community this year.

The feedback from our community partners survey was as follows:
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• Over 90% of our community partner survey respondents agree or strongly agree that Local CLC has contributed to the community having improved knowledge and self-confidence around legal issues
• 100% of survey respondents had confidence in making a referral to Local CLC for appropriate support or advice
• Over 80% of survey respondents indicated that they had increased competence and knowledge in making legal referrals to Local CLC.

Our community partners who make referrals to Local CLC say:

Always appreciate the readiness and willingness of staff to consider any issues raised and staff interest in our clientele group.

Always obliging and responsive to requests.  Provides good advice to clients.

We have worked with Local CLC to assist clients in navigating the legal system and we always feel confident that the service will provide the client with what is required for their issue.

After we have provided CLE activities, we always seek feedback about them to ensure we have met participant goals, and to enable us to improve future CLE activities.  Following are some of the comments from DV workers about Local CLC’s DVO Workshop:

I feel better equipped to talk to women about applying for a DVO.

I understand the DVO application better.

I have a better appreciation of what is involved in successfully applying for a DVO.

Some of our work

Schoolies is a long-standing tradition for school leavers in Queensland, but unfortunately, the fun can result in young people getting into trouble with the police and the criminal justice system.

Three years ago, as a result of Local CLC’s legal information on our website, Local High School approached us to provide their Year 12 students with some legal information about how to stay out of trouble at Schoolies.

Local CLC developed a community education session specifically about Schoolies and delivered the training to 200 students at Local High School. Local High School received positive feedback about the session and have subsequently invited Local CLC to provide the session every year. In the last year, the education session has been rolled out to 5 more high schools, as a result of Local High School spreading the word.
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Students that attended the session were surveyed for feedback. Over 80% of the students said they better understood how to stay out of trouble at Schoolies.

Our impact in our community

Local CLC works closely with community organisation partners to ensure that members of Local community get the legal services they need when they need them. Referral to and from our community partners are a vital part of being responsive to the community’s legal needs and ensuring that the people who most need our help have priority access to our services. There is some future work in enhancing Local CLC’s warm/facilitated referral process to community partners to ensure clients get the extra support they need.

Local CLC provides CLE activities and resources to the Local community and community partners. Our CLE program is designed to improve the legal education and knowledge of the community and our partners, so that our community can get the legal help they need, or avoid legal problems in the first place.

​The evidence indicates that this is best done with community partners that work most closely with the clients that need our services, and in the next 12 months, we look forward to developing our CLE program in consultation with them.