Working in Community Legal Centres in Victoria: COVID-19 experiences and lessons
How the community legal centre workforce adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Federation of Community Legal Centres Victoria Inc. engaged Victoria Law Foundation to conduct a survey of the community legal assistance sector workforce with the aim of capturing issues, experiences and views of their workforce across diverse roles, centres, and geography.
The COVID-19 report explores how the community legal centre workforce pivoted and adapted to the pandemic. The report outlines how community legal centres embraced new technologies but also highlights the issues that emerged for clients, staff and management in the face of pandemic-fuelled changes. The impact was not all negative, rapid change has facilitated benefits that will continue into the future.
This report focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on the community legal centre workforce, clients, and services and is one of a series of reports from the Community Legal Centres Workforce Project
Key Findings
Technological change long overdue
Many of the changes associated with improved technology, widely driven by the need to increase online service capacity, were described by many as being long overdue in community legal centres. COVID-19 conditions drove much needed upgrades and increased options for communicating with clients, other professionals and services, and courts and tribunals, as well as intra-centre communications and operations.
Working in Community Legal Centres in Victoria. Results from the Community Legal Centres Workforce Project: COVID-19 experiences and lessons
Release Date: 11 May 2022
Authors: Jozica J. Kutin, Hugh M. McDonald, Tenielle Hagland, Clare Kennedy and Nigel J. Balmer.
Download the report
