Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall has today announced to Legal Aid services available in Moree.
Monday, 1 August 2016
LEGAL Aid NSW is increasing legal services for the residents of the Moree district to better help people in the local community, Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall announced today.
“A number of new initiatives mean that local residents will have more access to legal advice and representation in several areas of the law,” Mr Marshall said.
“This is a part of the state which has a high level of unmet legal need and the new services will help address this need and give people somewhere to turn for help resolving their legal problems.”
“The Legal Aid NSW initiatives in Moree are part of a range of Legal Aid NSW strategies to better meet the needs of people in regional and rural communities across NSW.”
“The new services will include a group of specialist ‘preferred legal providers’ to give more local people better access to legal representation in care and protection and family law proceedings.”
The new services comprise:
- A family lawyer who will provide assistance in child protection matters in the local court and give advice on a range of legal matters affecting families in Moree once a month;
- The pilot of a ‘preferred provider’ scheme for care and protection matters in Moree. Under this scheme, Legal Aid NSW will select a group of lawyers from its panels as ‘preferred providers’ to represent children, parents and others, like kinship carers, on behalf of Legal Aid in care and protection matters;
- A specialist criminal Legal Aid lawyer to conduct all committals in serious indictable matters at Moree, a service which commenced earlier this year;
- A specialist civil law advice service for Aboriginal people helping resolve legal problems such as housing, household good rentals, and other consumer law issues, which visits every 6 to 8 weeks; and
- A new Cooperative Legal Service Delivery Program partnership – a network of legal service and community organisations who collaborate to improve justice outcomes for disadvantaged people in the area. The new CLSD Program partnership will be coordinated by the Aboriginal Legal Service office in Moree.
“I am also pleased to see Legal Aid NSW co-operate closely with other legal service providers like the Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT and with community organisations to jointly help local people address their legal problems,” Mr Marshall said.
Mr Marshall said the new services were able to be accessed by the community right now.