Just Healthy Families
Just Healthy Families (JHF) is a Health Justice Partnership providing free legal help within health and social services, to reduce family violence in Tasmania.
A collaboration between Women’s Legal Service Tasmania and Tasmania Legal Aid, Just Healthy Families partners with the Child Health and Parenting Service (CHAPS), Child and Family Learning Centres (CFLCs), and Hobart Women’s Shelter.
Many disadvantaged people, especially in regional areas, don’t seek legal help due to stress, cost, fear, or not recognising their issue as legal. By embedding lawyers in trusted health and community settings, JHF enables early intervention and streamlined support.
Our lawyers also train health and social service staff to recognise, respond, and refer people experiencing family violence, increasing opportunities for assistance.
Our lawyers can talk with you about a range of issues, including:
Violence in your home or family life
Contact with Child Safety Services
Separation from a partner or spouse
Lack of control over your money
Tenancy or housing problems
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Health Justice Partnerships involve legal services working with health and social services to streamline early access to legal help. One in five of the most disadvantaged in our community take no action in response to their legal problems for a range of reasons including stress, time, cost, fear or not realising it is a legal problem.
Living in regional and remote areas is also a barrier. When people do seek help, they are more likely to ask a trusted non-legal professional, such as a health or community service provider.
Co-locating the Just Healthy Families legal service in health service and social service facilities creates an opportunity for early legal invention by making legal services accessible and more responsive.
Just Healthy Families lawyers also provide training for the health and social service staff on how to recognise, respond and refer people experiencing family violence, increasing the opportunities for appropriate support and assistance.
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Just Healthy Families lawyers provide legal information and advice about a range of legal issues, including family violence, family law, tenancy and child protection issues.
The primary focus of Just Healthy Families is to assist people to intervene early in family violence situations. We also provide referrals to Tasmania Legal Aid for men who are perpetrators or experiencing family violence.
The Just Healthy Families lawyers attend health and social service sites on a regular basis as agreed with the individual service. We provide face-to-face legal information, advice and assistance to clients, and where appropriate, assist with referrals to other services.
Just Healthy Families lawyers work with strong legal teams at Women’s Legal Service Tasmania and Tasmania Legal Aid to ensure our clients are well supported if they require ongoing legal services.
Our lawyers are available by phone, email and remote video communications. Clients can make appointments by contacting the lawyer directly or can be referred by the health or social service provider they are visiting.
Our range of legal services include:
Legal advice, legal tasks, referral and advocacy
Family Violence Orders
Restraint Orders
Family law advice and assistance with referral to family dispute resolution services
Tenancy issues
Victims of crime compensation
Secondary Consultation
Just Healthy Families provides a secondary consultation service. This means that if you are a service provider with a client who you think might need legal assistance, you can contact our lawyers and seek their opinion about how they may be able to help your client.
Community Legal Education
An important part of our service is building the knowledge and skills of health and social services staff to respond to family violence. We provide training and community legal education to service providers about family violence and legal options for families facing violence.
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Information for people who want to access the Just Healthy Families service.
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