Preliminary Findings on the Value of Secondary Consultations in Reaching Hard to Reach Clients and in Building Professional Capacity

Abstract

For ten years in a CLC setting Curran routinely conducted secondary consultations for non-legal professional staff. Since 2011, Dr Curran has undertaken research evaluations of services that now form what are now collectively described in Australia as ‘Health Justice Partnerships’. Dr Curran will outline preliminary findings in the under-researched area of the impact of secondary consultations. Evidence is emerging from evaluation research on a range of Health Justice Partnerships (where a lawyer works in a multidisciplinary health and allied health setting) including a family violence program, a project examining urban mortgage stress/well being, a program where a lawyer is based within a health service in a regional setting and in relation to a specialist Community Legal Centre (the Consumer Action Law Centre) non legal worker advice line which integrate legal and non-legal services. This paper highlights the impact secondary consultation has and is having in terms of reaching hard to reach clients and building capacity of non-legal professionals in a climate of limited resources.

Note: This Conference Paper has been reworked and is currently under consideration by a scholarly journal and so is not reproduced in full.

Keywords: health justice partnerships; medical legal partnerships; access to justice; multi-disciplinary practice; legal secondary consultation, evaluation;measuring impact; meanruing social determinants of health