Client and carer access, involvement and leadership

This section delves into the importance of establishing safe physical environments and details resources that ensure services are readily accessible for all clients. The focus is on reducing barriers to ensure that everyone, no matter their individual circumstances, can access the services they require.

Following this is an exploration of lived experience and the role of the peer workforce, with a stepped approach to integrating lived experience involvement. This includes resources for carers, families, supporters, and kin.

A significant proportion of legal assistance services are now delivered remotely, or in a hybrid manner.

For in-person services, creating a safe physical space within your legal service can significantly enhance your clients' comfort and overall experience. This is particularly important for clients who have experienced trauma and who need to feel safe and comfortable to give good instructions and understand advice given. Safe physical spaces do not always require expensive remodelling, as simple and cost-effective changes can also contribute to improved safety and comfort.

Developing resources for clients to help lawyers provide trauma-informed, rights-based practice involves creating tools that are easily accessible and empower clients to understand and advocate for their rights. This could take the form of comprehensive guides that explain the legal process in clear, non-legal language, outlining what clients can expect at each stage. In the context of a trauma-informed approach, these resources should recognise the potential for legal processes to be triggering and offer strategies to help manage this. Additionally, resources can be designed to educate clients about their rights, emphasising their agency and the respect and fairness they deserve within the legal system. Digital platforms, such as a dedicated section on your organisation's website or a mobile app, can help ensure these resources are widely accessible. Videos, such as Fitzroy Legal Service’s When You See A Lawyer, can be sent to clients to help them prepare for meetings.Importantly, these resources should be codesigned with clients, using their input and feedback to ensure the material is relevant, respectful and beneficial to their legal journey. Resources will need to be translated into community languages to ensure accessibility.

The Uniting Communities Working Through Communication Barriers guide to supporting people within the criminal justice system is a resource for working with people with communication challenges. Many organisations have developed plain language explainers about legal processes, such as the Intellectual Disability Rights Service Your First Day at Court or Legal Aid South Australia’s Young People and the Law Factsheets.

Lived experience refers to the first-hand accounts and insights of individuals based on their personal experiences. It encompasses the knowledge obtained through living and understanding life from a particular perspective or within a particular context. For example, these people may have previously experienced legal issues, mental health challenges, or the impacts of trauma, and they use this personal experience to inform their work and enhance the services provided by your organisation.

Lived experience involvement in legal services is fundamentally trauma-informed and rights-based, as it empowers individuals who have often been marginalised or disempowered by the legal system. By placing clients in decision-making roles, it recognises and validates their lived experiences, including any past trauma, while concurrently fostering resilience and recovery. This paradigm shift ensures that the services provided are respectful, considerate and adapt to the impact of trauma. From a rights-based perspective, client leadership is an enactment of the principles of self-determination and participation, which are key human rights underpinning democratic societies. It respects and promotes the inherent dignity of every individual, encouraging equitable access to justice and contributing towards the creation of an inclusive and compassionate legal system in Australia.

In the context of your legal assistance organisation, when we talk about the lived experience workforce, we are referring to individuals who have personally experienced situations, challenges, or conditions similar to those faced by your clients. Depending on the nature of lived experience involvement, they may be past or current clients of your service. In some situations, such as where issues of confidentiality arise, it may be inappropriate to include current clients. Potential conflicts of interest may also preclude people from being involved in decisions about service provision that they may benefit from directly.

There are many benefits to including people with a lived experience of using services in the design, development, implementation, delivery and evaluation of those services. Lived experience involvement and peer workforces can also add value beyond the direct service environment, with broader organisational and systemic benefits. In the legal assistance sector, this means people with lived experience of using legal services themselves, and their carers, family, supporters and kin.

In many sectors adjacent to the legal assistance sector, such as the mental health system, lived experience involvement in service delivery is quickly becoming an essential element of quality service delivery. The benefits that flow from lived experience involvement are yet to be widely realised in the legal assistance sector, and there is only a very small peer workforce. Many legal assistance sector employees do have lived experience that is relevant to their professional roles, but they are not widely supported to bring those lived experience perspectives into their work.

Organisations should employ a strategic, stepped approach to increasing lived experience involvement, with small-scale initiatives laying the groundwork for more ambitious projects and programs that support organisational cultural change.

Where do we start? Lived experience advisory groups

All lived experience involvement should start with ensuring safety and support for all involved. This means that lived experience involvement should start small-scale and achievable, such as with a lived experience advisory group. Lived experience advisory group members must be remunerated for their time. The National Mental Health Commission Paid Participation Policy is a useful guide for assessing remuneration.

Other examples of advisory groups include Inner Melbourne Community Legal’s Consumer Advisory Group and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre's Homeless Person's Legal Service group StreetCare. StreetCare advises the NSW Government, academics, and housing and homelessness sector organisations through forums, including the Department of Communities and Justice’s Rough Sleeping Taskforce and the End Street Sleeping Collaboration. Your Story’s Advisory Group supports service delivery and includes professionals with expertise in disability as well as lived experience experts, reflecting a range of disabilities, interests, diversities, and intersections to provide robust, balanced, and comprehensive advice.

These advisory groups not only provide valuable insights but also serve as experts in various fields. Their importance is reflected in organisational processes, including advice, and additional activities to which they contribute, such as providing staff training, speaking at community legal education events, and participating in awareness-raising campaigns.

Peer workers and consumer consultants

A consumer or client consultant is usually a person who has used a service or a similar service and is now employed or engaged by that service or a related organisation to provide advice and feedback based on their personal experience. Their role is usually advisory and may involve responsibilities such as contributing to service design, policy development, and quality improvement efforts. Consumer consultants bring a unique perspective and their input can help ensure that legal services are client-focused and responsive to the needs of clients. This input might include how to make legal outreach more effective, or how to make documentation accessible.

On the other hand, a peer worker is a professional who shares a similar experience with the clients they are serving. They are employed in roles that leverage their lived experience to provide support, encouragement, and understanding to others who are going through similar situations. In these roles, peer workers often provide emotional and social support, assist clients in navigating services, and contribute to a culture of empathy and understanding within the organisation. A peer worker might provide moral support in court, or work alongside other professionals to provide a holistic service.

While both roles utilise lived experience, the difference lies in how that experience is applied. A peer worker directly supports clients, while a consumer consultant uses their experience to advise and improve the service. It is also possible for one person to fulfill both roles, depending on the needs of the organisation and the individual's skills and experiences. In any case, role clarity is essential to success.

Other professionals with lived experience, such as lawyers with experience of mental distress or the justice system, can also add substantial value to service delivery, often building rapport and better understanding client need. It is important to note the distinction between these people and the professions of consumer consultant and peer worker, which have their own training and professional discipline. Mixed roles are possible but require substantial work to ensure role clarity and prevent professional confusion.

There are very few examples of lived experience workforce roles in the legal assistance sector. These include Victoria Legal Aid’s Senior Consumer Consultant and Consumer and Lived Experience Consultant roles, and Legal Aid NSW’s Lived Experience Project Officer. Community Legal Western Australia have also embarked on a Lived Experience Project with the intention of embedding lived experience voices in policy and service system design. Two example position descriptions are included in Supporting Resources.

Codesign and coproduction

Codesign can be instrumental in ensuring that the services you provide are truly responsive to the needs of your clients. By involving clients and other stakeholders in the design process, you can tap into their unique insights and experiences, leading to solutions that are more aligned with their needs and realities. Codesign fosters a sense of ownership and engagement among those involved, resulting in services that are more effective, accessible, and relevant. It can also lead to innovative approaches and ideas that might not emerge from a more traditional, top-down design process. Ultimately, codesign can strengthen your organisation's connection with the community it serves, improve client satisfaction, and enhance the overall impact of your work.

However, codesign can be challenging as it requires a shift in traditional power dynamics, encouraging professionals and service users to share or relinquish decision-making power. This can be a complex process requiring substantial time and resources, as well as the ability to manage diverse stakeholders with different perspectives and expectations. Additionally, the practical aspects of bringing together these stakeholders and facilitating discussions to ensure all voices are heard and incorporated into a cohesive design can be quite difficult. Despite these challenges, the benefits of codesign in creating services that are truly responsive to user needs make it a worthwhile endeavour.

Although With You is the first codesigned national legal assistance sector project, there are other examples of codesign and coproduction across the sector.

For example, Fitzroy Legal Services have supported a range of lived experience initiatives and are developing a framework to embed a lived experience focus across the policy and practice of the organisation. Fitzroy Legal Services have a sound foundation to build on for this work, with experience with projects such as Women Transforming Justice, which included a Women’s Leadership Group comprising women with lived experience of the criminal legal system, and the Lawyers Empowering People Project that worked with people with a lived experience of cognitive disability and the legal system to co-design how to enable people feel safe and empowered, make their own decisions and participate more in their legal cases. Fitzroy Legal Service also provide an auspice to Voices for Change group run by and for people with brain injury who want to improve the legal and corrections system. These are different to advisory groups because the groups exercise control over decisions and are not limited to giving advice to decision-makers.

Building on other codesign work, Victoria Legal Aid is undertaking a full scale codesign process of its Mental Health and Disability Law team, including lived experience and professional stakeholders from across the mental health sector.

See Daya’s Participation Ladder: A consumer/survivor lens for an easy introduction to codesign principles.

Shifting towards a model of client leadership in your legal service in Australia represents an evolutionary step beyond client involvement or codesign. Client leadership positions the individuals who access your services not merely as beneficiaries or collaborators, but as drivers of your organisation's decisions, strategies, and operations. This approach recognises and values the unique insights and perspectives derived from their lived experiences. By empowering clients with leadership responsibilities, your organisation can develop more tailored, effective, and empowering legal solutions. Client leadership also serves as a catalyst for systemic change by amplifying the voices that are often unheard in the legal system, helping to make it more equitable, just, and responsive to the needs of all its users.

There are few examples of client leadership in the legal assistance sector, but some can be found in some health and welfare organisations, where the terms ‘consumer’ or ‘patient’ are commonly used. For example, the Growing Consumer Leadership Audit Tool guides organisations to ask questions to prompt reflection and strategic development of consumer leadership. Although designed for mental health organisations, it is easily applied to legal assistance sector organisations.

There is an urgent need to develop resources for carers, families, supporters and kin of people involved in the legal system to assist them in navigating the legal system. Lawyers are not well positioned to do this, either because clients do not consent; the potential of tainting witnesses; issues relating to legal professional privilege or at times, concerns about family dynamics. Lawyers are also client-focused and may be time poor.

Despite these barriers, carers, families, supporters and kin often provide essential support to clients, from practical supports such as accommodation and transport; to an understanding of the client’s preferences; personal, legal and medical history and management of their mental health. Where clients require support to make decisions, excluding people who can provide this support can limit the client's right to make decisions.

Where clients do not consent to lawyers speaking with carers, families, supporters and kin, there is often no explanation of a lawyer’s professional obligations provided to carers, creating unnecessary additional distress.

This does not mean that carers, families, supporters and kin must always be involved in a client’s legal proceeding, but that their involvement must be balanced with other rights and responsibilities.

Despite all states and territories having implemented carer recognition legislation or policies, there are very few resources available in the legal assistance sector for carers. The Legal Matters website on the Commonwealth’s Carer Gateway provides a brief overview of the legal rights of carers, but there is little else available. Legal services and carer, family, support and kin peak bodies must fill this gap by developing resources that support carers, families, supporters and kin so that they can better support clients and themselves.

Example resource for carers, family, supporters and kin: Draft letter on sharing information about clients

Dear [Name],

Thank you for contacting us about [Client’s Name].

We understand you are seeking more information about [Client’s Name]. We know you are concerned about them and want to be able to help. We understand the importance of being well-informed when navigating stressful legal matters that can bring uncertainty for the client and those who care and support them.

Confidentiality is important as it prevents information from being shared with other people without express informed consent. Some information may be shared with you with [Client’s Name]’s consent. I will regularly discuss with [Client’s Name] to confirm what information can be shared with others, including yourself. If [Client’s Name] wishes to share any information with you, they may do so voluntarily.

We appreciate your interest and concern for [Client’s Name]. It is our duty to protect their rights and maintain the confidentiality of their case. There are a range of reasons why lawyers are prevented from sharing information. To provide you with further details on why these limitations exist, we’ve provided an information sheet that we hope is helpful.

Please do not hesitate to contact our office if you have any further questions or require clarification. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation.

Your legal assistance organisation can play an important role in providing community legal education to the carers, family members, supporters and kin of your clients. This form of education can have transformative effects, empowering these individuals with the knowledge they need to provide even stronger support.

A significant component of the education can centre around the legal rights of both the individual they are supporting and their own rights as supporters. Understanding these rights can be a fundamental tool, enabling them to advocate more effectively for their loved one in various legal contexts.

Further, the complexity of the legal system can often be a barrier for those trying to navigate it. By demystifying this system through education, you can make it more accessible and less intimidating. This can involve explaining various aspects of the law, from family law to mental health law, based on the needs of the clients they support. It also includes sharing knowledge on how to interpret legal documents which can often seem confusing but are crucial in legal proceedings.

Additionally, offering training on self-advocacy can prove invaluable. Advocacy skills, such as preparing for legal meetings and effective communication with legal professionals, are useful not just for the individual they support, but can also empower them in their personal interactions with the law.

The goal is to ensure these individuals have the tools, resources and understanding to navigate the legal system confidently and to better support their loved ones, your clients.

In the mental health sector,some advances have been made in supporting carer, family, supporter and kin. The Commonwealth Mental health statement of rights and responsibilities 2012 includes a statement of rights and responsibilities of carers and support persons, which could be adapted to provide a framework for legal assistance services. The most advanced model the Victorian Government committing to establish eight Family and Carer-led Centres across the state. While this model will not be directly transferrable to the legal assistance sector, it highlights the gold standard being achieved in other sectors and shows the potential for legal services to partner with carer, family, supporter and kin organisations and support services.

Example of carer, family, supporter and kin support: Victoria’s Mental Health Family and Carer-led Centres

Victoria’s Family and Carer-led Centres will provide support for family, carers and supporters of people with mental health challenges. The Centres were a recommendation by the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.

The Centres will provide a warm and welcoming space for families, carers and supporters. They will provide information, support and access to funding. The Centres will be codesigned by families, carers, supporters and kin, in partnership with Tandem, Victoria’s peak body for families, carers and supporters. The Centres will be led by staff who have lived experience supporting someone with mental health challenges.

The Centres will:

• Each have a physical location and an online presence

• Provide information about supports and services available in each region

• Connect families, carers and supporters with the right support as available

• Offer after-hours access in some form

• Provide families, carers, friends, and supporters with access to funds to help with immediate practical needs

• Support older carers with transition planning

• Help families and carers to navigate the Mental Health and Wellbeing system and other supports

• Support volunteer-based family and carer peer support groups in each region

Next Section: Organisational and System Change