Save community legal centres: End the funding crisis
Community legal centres like ours are in a funding and workforce crisis. The Save community legal centres: End the funding crisis campaign launches today. Illawarra Legal Centre is proud to have endorsed the campaign sign-on.
Read and endorse here: www.savecommunitylegalcentres.com/take-action
Community legal centres help hundreds of thousands of people every year to resolve everyday legal problems in areas like housing, relationships, debts and money problems, and discrimination. People trust their local community legal centre to support them early, before legal problems snowball to crisis point.
Community legal centres play a crucial role preventing and responding to domestic and family violence. Frontline family law and family violence services make up the largest areas of work for many of the 150+ centres across Australia.
Community legal centres are at breaking point. Funding shortages and overwhelming demand are forcing centres to turn away over 1,000 people each day and reduce services to local communities across the country. The crisis will only worsen until the sector secures a guarantee of ongoing funding.
The 2024 Federal Budget failed to provide the urgent funding boost and long-term funding security the community legal sector desperately needs. With less than a year’s guaranteed funding left, community legal centres are in the most uncertain position we have faced in a decade.
The costs to our communities of the chronic underfunding of community legal centres include:
- More people in prisons and hospitals
- Women and children stuck in dangerous situations for longer
- People losing their homes and becoming homeless
- Households and individuals overwhelmed by debt and financial problems
- Families stuck in conflict over custody, child support and family law issues
- Asylum seekers facing exploitation due to their visa status.
Save community legal centres: End the funding crisis calls on governments to step up and provide fair funding to community legal centres:
- $35 million this year to address the workforce crisis.
- At least $270 million per year for community legal centres from 1 July 2025, committed by December 2024.
- $95 million for frontline domestic and family violence work.
#SaveOurCentres #FundFrontlineServices #CommunityLaw
