Our Change Grants provide funding from the Public Purpose Fund for not-for-profit organisations to implement individual projects that will address issues or gaps limiting people’s access to justice, enabling them to test new ideas and advocate for systemic change. By providing organisations with vital funding, the Victorian Legal Services Board supports innovation in service delivery, education, policy and law reform, helping to reduce disadvantage in Victoria when it comes to access to justice.
In the 2024 Change Grants round, we funded 23 projects, totalling $11,875,997.
We are pleased to announce the 2024 Change Grants, below.
Congratulations to all successful grantees, we look forward to seeing the progress you make towards improving access to justice in Victoria.
Successful applicants
Legal labyrinth: finding a way through cancer’s legal and financial challenges
$316,862 over two years
There are many confronting aspects of a cancer diagnosis – starting with diagnosis itself and increasingly, the rapid legal and financial burden placed on individuals, their families and carers. This project will use data and case studies to uncover common legal and financial issues for people affected by cancer. It will develop specialist resources and education tools to assist people to navigate these challenges.
Understanding and fixing harmful car industry sales practices with First Nations
$558,000 over two years
First Nations people face some of the harshest practices from used car dealers and experience substantial and far-reaching harm. This First Nations-led project aims to reduce harm caused by licensed traders selling faulty vehicles and address the barriers to exercising legal protections. Additionally, learnings will inform a model and guidance on co-design with First Nations communities, to fill a known practice gap in consumer advocacy, legal assistance and comparable settings.
Health Justice Partnership: Seniors Rights Victoria and Better Health Network
$343,000 over two years
Elder abuse is a pervasive issue affecting the independence and dignity of older Victorians, with a complex interplay of health, legal, and social factors that can create barriers to justice for people being mistreated. This health justice partnership between Seniors Rights Victoria and the Better Health Network will combine legal expertise with healthcare resources to create a holistic support service for senior Victorians who may be experiencing or are at risk of elder abuse.
Resisting data extractive business models through privacy reform
$100,000 over one year
Significant privacy reform will likely take place in Australia over the next year, representing a once in a generation opportunity to update these laws. This project will assist community and civil society organisations to better understand the connection between data extractive business models and predatory industries and other consumer harms, and how privacy rights can be used to protect vulnerable people.
Legally empowering Aboriginal peoples to care for Country
Environmental Justice Australia
$300,000 over two years
This project will provide legal support, advice and representation to Aboriginal peoples and their representative organisations to advance and use the law to better protect, care for, and exercise authority over Country and its environmental and ecological values. Led by Aboriginal clients, this project will identify innovative legal pathways to achieve water, land, and sea and coastal justice-based outcomes.
The Law Handbook AI project
$300,000 over 1.5 years
The Law Handbook offers some of the most extensive legal information in the country in a single resource. This project will use user-centered design and artificial intelligence to transform the Handbook into a highly accessible digital legal product that will further empower the community and lawyers to find reliable up-to-date legal information in intuitive ways, while promoting knowledge about these emerging technologies.
Yallum Yallum – Elders and Respected Persons Council
$800,000 over 3 years
Located in the Grampians Region, this independent and self-determining justice model seeks to divert Aboriginal community members away from the criminal justice system, while promoting cultural healing, social and emotional wellbeing and a stronger role in culture and community. This project will implement and refine the model, with a view to it being adopted beyond the Grampians Region.
Study on impact of health justice partnership on health and legal practitioner capability to address complex need
$236,000 over 2 years
This study explores the impact of health justice partnership (HJP) on the capability of health and legal practitioners to respond to complex intersecting need, and on the sustainability of their efforts (burnout). A key focus will be on the legal capability of health practitioners, who act as a pathway to legal support for HJP clients who may otherwise not get legal help. The study will also explore how HJP supports lawyers to respond to legal issues that intersect with health needs.
Expanding and improving integrated family violence partnerships to advance a comprehensive response to family violence in North East Victoria
Hume Riverina Community Legal Service
$690,000 over 2 years
There is an increasing demand for family violence support services in North East Victoria. This project will strengthen the existing integrated partnership with Centre Against Violence and extend the program to include Upper Murray Family Care family violence practitioners. Initiatives to improve the effectiveness of the program and to ensure sustainability for its planned growth will include trauma-informed care to program lawyers, legal up-skilling of family violence practitioners, community of practice for practitioners and lawyers, strategic-level program governance, triage booking system, and improved data management for better evaluation.
Specialist Social Housing Legal Program
Inner Melbourne Community Legal
$1,000,000 over 3 years
Delivery of social housing in Victoria is undergoing a rapid transformation with the provision of housing shifting from public sector to not-for-profit community organisations. This project will establish a dedicated Specialist Social Housing Legal Program to bridge knowledge and service gaps for social housing renters, aiming to result in safe, secure, comfortable, affordable homes and prevent cycles of homelessness.
Restorative practice as early intervention
$668,000 over 3 years
Disengagement from school is a known driver for justice-system involvement. Restorative justice practice has demonstrated success at decreasing disengagement from school and other justice-related matters, including intervention orders and conflict among young people that leads to violence in schools and the community. Using restorative justice practice in education as an early intervention tool, this project aims to facilitate systemic change that stems the flow of young people into the justice system through early intervention in the education setting.
Supporting change in Supported Residential Services
$1,000,000 over 3 years
Institutional domestic abuse of vulnerable adults, limited awareness about the nature and impacts of coercive control of people living in Supported Residential Services environments and systemic barriers that hinder addressing these matters were among the findings of the initial Supported Residential Services legal assistance pilot project. Seeking to increase access to justice for people living with psychosocial disability in supported residential services and other ‘supported’ accommodation, this new project will extend on those initial findings by leveraging extensive sector-wide relationships to provide advocacy, deliver education and contribute to systemic reform.
Justice at Local Mental Health and Wellbeing Services
$1,184,818 over 2 years
Partnering with local community legal centres, Mind Australia will set up health justice partnerships at Mind-run Mental Health and Wellbeing Local services in Bendigo-Echuca, Dandenong and Melton. This project will provide a holistic, person-centred model of care, so that legal and mental health issues can be addressed concurrently at each service. The project will also leverage Mind’s expertise in lived experience-led community-based models of care, informed by Intentional Peer Support and trauma informed practice, to collaboratively develop a holistic wellbeing and legal health check toolkit.
Hear Me Out as part of TECH4JUSTICE (TM) Expansion to Victoria
$330,000 over 2 years
Hear Me Out is an important component of the broader Tech4Justice project, a collaborative initiative that leverages technology and evidence-based advocacy to enhance access to justice through complaint pathways. Hear Me Out is a digital platform that provides resources to help people navigate complex complaint systems for individual redress. It also enables ethical data collection, to identify opportunities for systemic change.
This digital platform is already successfully operating in NSW and this project will bring it to Victoria.
Families affected by child sex offending - support at warrant and beyond
$300,000 over 2 years
Working closely with police, this project will support non-offending partners and affected family members at and beyond warrants executed by the Victorian Joint Anti Child Exploitation Team (JACET) and the Sexual Offences and Child Investigations Teams. PartnerSPEAK will also provide peer support and specialised training and advice to police.
No Pressure: Youth Theatre Project
Peninsula Community Legal Centre
$400,000 over 2 years
No Pressure is an interactive theatre project for young people and secondary school students which provides legal education on youth crime and family violence, exploring common themes of coercive control, controlling behaviour and peer pressure. Using professional actors, the performance will provide legal education by telling a story about the impact of these harmful behaviours on perpetrators, victim survivors, and their families and friends. In addition to providing legal education about young people’s rights and responsibilities, the performances aim to give young people the tools to question and challenge violence-supporting attitudes and behaviours within their own community.
Extending the Reach of Read-Along Dads/Mums programs across Victoria
Rotary Club of Castlemaine (Read-Along Dads/Mums)
$223,140 over 3 years
This project will refine and strengthen the existing Read-Along Dads/Mums program in regional Victoria and establish a state-wide ‘community of practice’ across Victoria’s prisons, to promote and support program adoption.
Civil Justice and Recovery Project
Sexual Assault Services Victoria
$118,472 over 15 months
This project will undertake the foundational work of developing resources, referral pathways and networks to support the future work of Justice Navigators within specialist sexual assault services, to improve the outcomes of sexual violence victim survivors engaged in civil claims.
Yallum Yallum for the Western District of Victoria
Shara Clarke Aboriginal Culture and Education Centre
$180,000 over 1.5 years
This project builds on the principles of Yallum Yallum to create a tailored, self-determining justice model unique to the needs and aspirations of Western District Aboriginal communities. The model would aspire to provide an alternative option for Aboriginal community members facing the Magistrates’ Court that diverts them away from further involvement in the criminal justice system and promotes cultural healing, social and emotional wellbeing and a stronger role in culture and community.
Specialist social security hub and spoke model to increase access to justice for vulnerable and disadvantaged Victorians
Social Security Rights Victoria
$763,250 over 2 years
This project will use Social Security Rights Victoria’s expertise in social security law and experience in integrated practice to increase access to justice for vulnerable and disadvantaged community members by establishing a hub-and-spoke model of service delivery via partnerships with four services. This model will provide advice, case work, secondary consultation, mentoring and training in relation to people experiencing social security legal issues in Victoria.
Strengthening a holistic response to family violence – integrating legal into Alexis: Family Violence Response Model (A-FVRM)
$856,435 over 3 years
Alexis: Family violence Response Model (A-FVRM) is a well-established model that responds to families who have repeated contact with police and social services due to family violence. Alexis is a partnership between The Salvation Army and Victoria Police and currently operates in the inner-south of Melbourne and Gippsland. Working collaboratively, Southside Justice and Gippsland Community Legal Service will integrate legal services into A-FVRM, to offer specialised and trauma-informed legal assistance.
Lotjpadhan Restorative Justice Project
$607,000 over 2 years
The Lotjpadhan project provides restorative justice conciliation services in the Eastern Metro region with a view to expand statewide. It responds to an identified need within the community to restore healthy connections to self, family, community and culture – particularly for people who have been involved in the criminal justice system or those at risk of involvement. The restorative justice framework allows for healing on multiple levels and provides the fundamental foundations for Aboriginal-led justice outcomes throughout the justice continuum, from early intervention to tertiary engagement. This project will support the continuation of the Lotjpadhan Restorative Justice Project, including the continuing engagement work necessary to establishing trusting collaborations with community.
Tackling the overrepresentation and criminalisation of young people aged 18–25: An intervention and advocacy project
$600,000 over 2 years
This project focuses on the over representation and criminalisation of 18–25 year olds in the Victorian criminal justice system. It aims to develop a specialised, multidisciplinary and integrated model to successfully engage with and respond to the needs of young people. With a three-pronged approach involving early intervention, intensive assistance and collaborative advocacy, the project will deliver, test and build the evidence base for what works.