Relationships create a united voice for change
The Queensland Indigenous Family Violence Legal Service (QIFVLS) is our equivalent in northern Queensland, and they popped into our Darwin office yesterday. There are 14 equivalent organisations around Australia, and we all have the same mandate to service Indigenous people.
An important arm of NAAFLS is our Policy & Advocacy work where we focus on advocating for systemic change for our clients. A key part of that work is building relationships, and our meeting with QIFVLS was a great example of that. We met to share ideas on how we can better meet the needs of our clients in the future.
More funding is needed
“We talked about what is working, and what isn’t working and needs more attention” said NAAFLS Deputy CEO Cassandra Carolin. “We all agreed moving forward requires more funding for the work we do. In the past the focus has been on the legal services, and we agree it is important to have better funded support teams to strengthen our legal service delivery”.
Peak body for family violence in Australia
Wynetta Dewis (bottom row, RHS) is the CEO of QIFVLS and the Chairperson of the National Family Violence Prevention Legal Services, the peak body for all Aboriginal family legal services in Australia. She is currently on a trip around Australia to meet with all the Indigenous family violence legal services to drive support to strengthen the national peak and shift service delivery to be more appropriate for Aboriginal people.
“It was good to have a yarn and hopefully we will have more meetings in the future so we can make proper systematic change, particularly around child removal and kinship caring” said Cassandra.
