Legal Support

According to Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), family, domestic and sexual violence is ‘behaviour that cause or intend to cause, fear or harm. [2] Our clients are victims or survivors of violence in the form of threats, assaults, abuse, neglect or harassment. This type of behaviour is designed to intimidate, harm, injure or control the victim. This violence affects partner and family relationships, all ages, backgrounds, women and children. One in four women are victims of Domestic and Family Violence.[3]

WWLS’s key objective is to address the legal needs and facilitate non legal wraparound support for victims and survivors of family violence and sexual assault.

We take the victim seriously, we listen to the risk, stress the serious nature Domestic and Family Violence, respect their right to confidentiality, respect their decisions, non-judgmental support, provide experience and knowledge, our understanding of their limited choices, support their belief that they are strong, provide information about legal pathways, support networks, accommodation, financial support, cycle of violence, that it is not their fault, that they are not alone.

We do not rescue because many victims leave a number of times before they are finally free. They can and do make their decisions for themselves.

We attempt to put an end to ongoing episodes of violence by providing crisis support and intervention immediately after the violence occurs, as well as long-term management to permanently eliminate victimisation. We work intensely with the victim in the aftermath of a violent incident and gradually decrease engagement over time as needs are met and future violence reduces.

Victim Support includes case management, which identifies the victim’s needs and assists them in accessing relevant services such as financial counselling, housing support, legal assistance, and, where necessary, coordinating service delivery or access to appointments, meetings, services, and so on.

Victim Support also includes elements of counselling, with a particular emphasis on developing individual and family-wide skills that help parents/caregivers better recognise family violence, address its consequences, and break patterns of violent behaviour. Therapeutic care may also be required if the victim is experiencing trauma because of the violence.

Key components of Victim Support are to provide risk assessment, care planning and management, service integration, shared understanding of family violence and trauma informed approach. We assess the need and risk to prepare a care plan to identify what intervention and actions the victim and services will take to achieve them. This includes the wraparound support. This refers to all support services that assist in the risk assessment, care planning and monitoring of the plan and its implementation. This is part of our trauma informed care.

Trauma informed care recognise what impact trauma inflicts on victim’s lives. This means we are aware of possible triggers and vulnerabilities of trauma survivors and seek to avoid re-traumatisation.

NSW government have responsibility for Child Protection and to provide support for children who are at risk of abuse, neglect or harm and whose parents are unable to provide adequate care and protection.[4] This makes it challenging to prosecute or respond to matters outside of jurisdiction. Statistics show that 1 in 32 Australian children under 18 years encounter the child protection system where 1 in 126 are found at risk of or a victim of maltreatment.[5] We refer such cases to partner services in Broken Hill if we are not able to assist in the matter.

Apart from the family violence that includes sexual assaults, we also provide legal support for the National Redress Scheme. This is a government initiative for people who had experienced child sexual abuse while in an institution. The Scheme helps people access redress and can connect them to free confidential Redress Support Services. We provide legal advice and may refer client to our counsellors to provide support letter for Victims’ Compensation applications. We will refer the client if client consents to referral.

The Victims Support Scheme provides counselling, financial assistance and a recognition payment to victims of an act of violence or act of modern slavery in NSW. The object of the scheme is to help (support and rehabilitation) victims of crime, assist victims to recover from the crime, and to give statutory recognition to victims of crime and any harm they suffered from that criminal offending.[6] This VC is also open to secondary victims – witness to violent crime, or a parent or guardian who is injured as a result of learning their child was injured in a violent crime.

For Victims’ Compensation matters, our Counsellor may be requested to write a support letter if client needs it. Our solicitor may draft the application for compensation.

We have offered court support and witness support services for clients. This is a service where we help with a witness in cases that involve family and domestic violence and sexual assaults. While we do not get too much of these matters, we are ready to offer assistance if we have capacity to do so.

References 

[2] AIHW Website, ‘Family and Domestic Violence and sexual violence’, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2024, Online < Family and domestic violence – Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (aihw.gov.au)>.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Above n2. ‘Child Protection Australia 2022-2023’.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Victims Rights and Support Act 2013 (NSW).

Counselling Support

Non-Legal Support

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