annual report 08-09 - Public Interest Advocacy Centre

‘
One of the aims of
Street Care is to ...
facilitate meaningful
consultation with
homeless people ... ’
One of the aims of Street Care is
to be a central point of contact
to facilitate appropriate and
meaningful consultation with
homeless people on issues
affecting them. Street Care is
able to put forward informed
recommendations to government
agencies and other organisations to ensure that homeless people
have a strong voice in the community.
In March, the office of the NSW Premier, the Hon Nathan Rees,
invited Street Care to attend NSW Parliament House for a tour and
to watch Question Time in the Legislative Assembly. NSW Minister
for Housing, the Hon David Borger, invited Street Care to his
Parliamentary office where he listened to concerns identified by
members based on their personal experiences of homelessness.
An exciting event that demonstrated the importance of a group
like Street Care was the invitation for one of the members to
speak at a conference organised jointly by the City of Sydney and
Mercy Foundation. Street Care member Sarah Bartley spoke to
and took questions from a gathering of 150 people who work
in the homeless sector. She described her experience of what is
necessary to make exiting homelessness permanent.
THE MENTAL HEALTH LEGAL SERVICES PROJECT
A major milestone for the Mental Health Legal Services Project
(MHLSP) was achieved in March 2009 when the NSW Public
Purpose Fund (PPF) funded four MHLSP pilot projects for two years.
The four pilot projects are:
1. to place a lawyer at the NSW Service for the Treatment and
Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors (STARTTS);
2. to place a lawyer at the Multicultural Disability Advocacy
Association (MDAA);
3. to place a social worker at the Shopfront Youth Legal Centre
(Shopfront); and
4. to employ an Indigenous Men’s Access to Justice (IMAJ) Worker,
to work with the Gamarada Men’s Healing Program and to be
engaged in systemic advocacy.
This complements the funding from Legal Aid NSW for the project
co-ordination and training development and delivery. Two
training modules, both of which are one-day workshops, have
been developed:
1. ‘How to Work With Consumers’, for lawyers; and
2. ‘How to Sort Out Your Pre-Legal Problems’, for people who are
mentally ill (consumers).
This funding success affirms the hard work undertaken by PIAC
in realising the creation of an innovative set of pilot projects and
training modules. It also represents a positive contribution by the
PPF toward supporting a groundbreaking approach to improving
access to justice for people with mental illness.
The Pilot Projects
The pilot projects will have a considerable, beneficial impact on
the health, well-being and legal outcomes of consumers. For
example, Jamie Alford, the social worker placed at Shopfront
Youth Legal Service, described the following case scenario:
Patrick [not his real name], aged 18, is homeless. Over the
past two years he has been admitted on several occasions to
psychiatric hospitals in a state of psychosis. He was recently
diagnosed for the first time with schizo-affective disorder. In
addition to this serious mental illness, Patrick is struggling to deal
with the physical and psychological symptoms associated with a
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PUBLIC INTEREST ADVOCACY CENTRE • ANNUAL REPORT 2008-2009