OVERVIEW OF ORGANISATION:

Canberra Community Law (CCL) is an independent community legal centre. It has over 30 years’ experience providing high quality, wrap around community legal services for vulnerable clients.  CCL provides specialist legal advice, assistance and representation services to people in the ACT on low incomes for matters relating to tenancy, public housing, social security and disability discrimination law.

CCL also operates the following services:

1. Street Law: outreach legal service to people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
2. Night Time Legal Advice Service: information, referral services or one-off advice in most areas of law.
3. Dhurrawang Aboriginal Human Rights Program: holistic civil law service for ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in its specialist areas of law, through a human rights framework.

In addition to providing legal and social worker services, CCL undertakes law reform and policy submission work and runs community legal education programs.

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Social Worker will work in CCL’s Socio-Legal Practice Clinic (SLP Clinic). The core objective of the SLP Clinic is to contribute to maximise the successful resolution of CCL clients’ legal matters through the integration of legal and social work services to highly vulnerable people who have multiple, significant and complex barriers to successfully resolving their legal matter.

The primary focus of the SLP Clinic is addressing homelessness especially for women and children affected by family violence and people with a disability. The SLP Clinic also assists clients with other legal problems including social security and disability discrimination matters.

The Social Worker will work closely with a CCL lawyer to undertake joint case work to identify and address interrelated legal and social issues affecting the resolution of clients’ legal matters.  The approach adopted by the SLP Clinic is like health-justice partnerships that benefits from addressing legal issues with multi-disciplinary skill-sets.

In tandem with the CCL lawyer, the social worker will work closely with the client to put in place a social worker plan to:

• Help address the underlying issues/barriers identified through providing short to medium term intensive social work case management.
• Link clients with well targeted services and supports.
• Support clients through the legal process.

The role also includes undertaking psycho-social assessments and reports to enable a full understanding of the client’s circumstances. 

The Social Worker also provides secondary consultations to CCL lawyers on non-legal issues impacting on clients and participates in key networks and forums. The Social Worker also plays a critical role in strengthening CCL’s internal capacity to respond to highly vulnerable clients with complex needs.

The social worker reports directly to and is responsible to the Executive Director/Principal Solicitor, who in turn, is responsible to CCL’s Board of Management.

CCL has a strong, supportive and family friendly organisational culture.

Salary range is $86 229 to $90 070.50 per annum plus superannuation and salary packaging

The position description is attached.