Network for Law & Human Rights (School of Law)

The network for law and human rights regularly represents survivors of family violence and modern slavery in their applications for Victims Support. Current support includes:

• Assisting Afghan asylum seekers to obtain humanitarian visas after being evacuated by the Australian government during the fall of Kabul with 11 successful applications in the month of August 2022.
• Working on Legal Aid applications with Aboriginal clients of The Shed in Mt Druitt.
• Developing a health justice clinic for outreach to family and sexual violence survivors in Cranebrook.
• Providing community legal education to secondary schools in western Sydney on topics such as consent, intimate image and sexting offences, road and traffic safety, and police powers.
• Membership of the Parramatta Legal and Justice Coalition, which is advocating for an expansion of the legal and justice precinct in Western Sydney, for which we just submitted a large case analysis to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
• Collaboration with a pro bono law firm and community legal centre to produce research into the possibility of introducing a “fines without conviction” sentencing option in NSW, following the disproportionate impact that COVID fines had on disadvantaged communities, including Indigenous communities in NSW and those in Greater Western Sydney suburbs.
• Drafting submissions to the statutory reviews of the Victims Rights and Support Act 2013 (NSW) and the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth), to promote and embed the rights of victim-survivors of violence and modern slavery.
• Assisting Blacktown City Council with finding and analysing data to contextualise the Australian Development Census Results that the suburb of Tregear saw a decrease in vulnerabilities in all domains in the periods 2012 to 2018. Our work led to a collaborative group being formed in Tregear to use our data for the benefit of the community. The data we collected was also shared with schools in Tregear to assist them with their planning.
• We have worked closely with Westerly since 2020, a grassroots network of community organisations in Western Sydney seeking to raise digital inclusion issues. We meet with Westerly fortnightly and assist the group with all aspects of their work. Our work with this group has included assisting them with research, data analysis and project design.

In addition to the work above, the network for law and human rights (school of law) has a relationship with Catholic Healthcare, which is one of the largest owners and providers of services in residential aged care facilities. Projects the network is currently working on includes:

• whether residents in aged care facilities are being adequately supported in exercising their right to vote, with an empirical study of the experience of the May 2022 elections in 3 residential aged care facilities - on in metropolitan Sydney; one in outer Sydney; one in regional NSW (Dubbo).
• The situation in relation to people previously incarcerated and the responsibilities of residential aged care providers to accommodate these people while respecting the rights and concerns of current residents and their families.