Legal health checks – Australia

Note to Canadian users: We share the following materials as examples of approaches to legal health checks in other jurisdictions. The legal content in the materials may not be relevant to Ontario or Canadian law and as such should not be distributed in their exact form to your clients. If you wish to adapt any of the tools for your own context, please contact the specific authoring organization.

Legal Health Check online portal for community workers (Queensland), 2014-2015

This series of five legal screening tools is intended to help community workers detect legal issues and make appropriate referrals. The five checklists are tailored to the following groups: marginalized people generally; youth at risk; newcomers; people facing housing problems; people with mental health issues

Authoring organization: Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing House Incorporated (QPILCH)
Intended users: Frontline community workers serving marginalized clients
Areas screened: debt; unpaid fines; housing; criminal law; social assistance; family and relationships; employment law; problems related to owning a car

Materials:

Legal Health Check Up: What Shape Is Your Legal Health In? (Tasmania), 2012

This comprehensive resource, produced by a community legal centre, contains point-form practical and legal tips on various life events and situation in which people encounter the law. It also contains information on how to find a lawyer and how to prepare for a legal appointment. Much of the information is practical in nature and would lend itself to adaptation to the Canadian context with some editing to change Australian references to Canadian ones.

Authoring organization: Women’s Legal Service
Intended users: Vulnerable women (but useful for the general public)
Areas screened: Business law; employment law; family law; wills and estates law; immigration/international law; real property law; personal injury; criminal law; “other matters”

Materials:

What shape is your legal health in? (PDF – 32 pages)
NOTE: page 5 contains a helpful one-page checklist relevant to the Canadian context on things to look out for when signing an agreement.

Legal Health Checklist (Australian Capital Territory), 2012

This resource, produced by a community legal centre, contains point-form tips on financial and insurance issues.

Authoring organization: Legal Aid ACT
Intended users: General public
Areas screened: Wills; matrimonial and family law; buying a house; housing (for landlords and tenants); mortgages; personal loans; bankruptcy; what happens when someone dies; being questioned by the police

Materials:

Legal Health Checklist (PDF – 3 pages)

Legal Health Check – videos and questionnaire (Queensland), 2012

A community legal centre produced two training videos and a screening questionnaire intended to help pro bono lawyers and front-line workers detect legal issues in order to refer their clients for appropriate help. The resources target people facing homelessness and focus on the fact that these people often have multiple and intersecting legal needs.

Authoring organization: Homeless Persons Legal Clinic
Intended users: Front line staff who assist people at risk of or experiencing homelessness; pro bono lawyers at satellite legal clinics dealing with homeless people or people at risk of homelessness
Areas screened: Debt, housing, guardianship, crime, child and family issues, “general”

Materials:

Legal health check training videos

Using the HPLC Health Check – introduction (YouTube – 7:43)
Using the HPLC Health Check – Training Version (YouTube – 22:59)

Transcripts of training videos

Using the HPLC Health Check – introduction (PDF – 7 pages)
Using the HPLC Health Check – Training Version (PDF – 16 pages)

Printed materials

Sharing the Menu: Perspectives and Data from the Legal Health Check: A 2013 report sharing perspectives and data from the development and use of the Homeless Legal Person’s Clinic’s Legal Health Check. See Appendix 1, pages 21-27 for a sample Legal Health Check questionnaire (PDF – 27 pages)
Legal Health Check: Snapshot: A brief summary of the Legal Health Check project, including information about assessing legal need. (PDF – 4 pages)

We will update this section with more legal health check materials as they become available. Have you designed or come across any legal health checks or checklists which are not mentioned above? Please contact us.