AN innovative Victorian program that helps vulnerable seniors at risk of abuse is expanding to Sydney.
Health Justice Partnerships (HJP) place a lawyer into a community health centre setting to provide legal advice to at-risk older people who might not otherwise seek help.
The program has been running at cohealth, a not-for-profit health centre in Melton, Victoria, since March last year offering assistance in more than 290 matters including direct advice and casework, and referral of cases to pro bono lawyers.
It also offers secondary consultations to health workers who then pass the information on to the older person, who may not yet be ready to see a lawyer.
A second partnership has been set up at St Vincent’s Hospital.
The program is run through Justice Connect, an organisation that provides free legal services to the disadvantaged and the community organisations that support them.
Now the program is looking to expand to Sydney and is looking for a health service to partner with.
Lawyer Yvonne Lipianin, manager of the NSW Health Justice Partnership, said the program was designed to focus on elder abuse but clients with other legal issues such as tenancy would not be turned away.
Ms Lipianin said the partnerships enable the lawyer to “have a greater reach to vulnerable clients by integrating a lawyer into a health care setting”.
Many people at risk of elder abuse were not aware the situation they were experiencing could be helped by a lawyer, she said. “But they might tell their doctor or their podiatrist or their physiotherapist.”
Some of the cases the HJP have dealt with are harrowing.
They include a very elderly couple forced to live in their car when they sold their home and gave the money to a son so he could build a granny flat for them on his property – which he never did.
In another case, an elderly lady wanted to make a will but was afraid of her husband’s anger after physical abuse.
