To ensure the potential social harms caused by COVID-19 are minimised to the greatest extent possible, Community Legal Centres NSW has worked with expert specialist community legal centres within our membership to develop a set of critical social policy interventions.

Climate change impacts most severely the very people and communities that community legal centres make it our core business to represent: people who experience social and economic discrimination and disadvantage. Community Legal Centres NSW sees responding to climate change as a critical step in the pursuit of justice for all. We need to be a voice in the national conversation about climate change, and the need for an urgent, adequate and just response.

Alastair Lawrie, Senior Policy Officer at PIAC, writes on the public forum held by PIAC and Gilbert + Tobin to discuss the Religious Discrimination Bill.

See how Financial Rights Legal Centre has been helping people in affected communities with their disaster insurance claims.

 Justine O'Reilly, Principal Solicitor of Shoalcoast Community Legal Centre, writes about her experience of visiting bushfire-ravaged communities on the South Coast in January 2020.

Article provided by Emily Phipps, Arts Law Centre

The North & North West Community Legal Service is currently working on opening a second office located in Moree NSW, which they aim to have operational from early January 2020. Article provided by Terri King and Sandy Watt, North & North West Community Legal Service.

Welcome to new CLCNSW Chairperson, Arlia Fleming.

 The Northern Rivers CLC led a CLSD project where young people made films about legal issues relevant to them.  Story provided by Katja McPherson, Solicitor, Northern Rivers CLC.

 The opening plenary session of the November 2019 Quarterlies posed the question “Do we need to be different in 2022?” to get the sector’s thinking caps on well ahead of tendering for State and Commonwealth funding in 2022. Introduced and facilitated by outgoing Community Legal Centres NSW Chair Katrina Ironside, the plenary featured three compelling visions for the future of the community legal sector posed by three external allies of the sector: Professor Simon Rice, Director of Professional and Community Engagement at the University of Sydney, Anne Cregan, Partner at Gilbert + Tobin, and Geoff Mulherin, Director of the Law and Justice Foundation of NSW.

Mid North Coast Community Legal Centre is excited to have opened the doors to its second office, located in Coffs Harbour, with additional State funding. Coffs Harbour, Nambucca and Bellingen local government areas were identified by the Cameron Review in 2018 as a gap in community legal centre services.

The University of Newcastle Legal Centre recently launched the Older Persons’ Legal Clinic as a response to the many elder law issues that arise. The service offers free legal advice and assistance to people aged 60 years and over, to people of indigenous descent aged 50 years and over, their families and carers.

Inner City Legal Centre, Kingsford Legal Centre, Marrickville Legal Centre, and Redfern Legal Centre have together established a new statewide service to address the employment exploitation of migrant workers.

How can Artificial Intelligence be used to improve access to justice? Marrickville Legal Centre is leading the charge on this technology to build a chatbot that will transform service delivery for community legal centres, thanks to a $250,000 investment from the NSW Government’s new Access to Justice Innovation Fund. 

Every Thursday, Katrina Ironside, Senior Solicitor with Women’s Legal Service NSW, heads for the office of Bonnie Women’s Services in Canley Heights. Bonnie’s provides accommodation, crisis and other support services to women escaping domestic violence in the Fairfield and Liverpool areas of south-west Sydney.