August 21, 2026 | Ben Jessup
On Thursday 20 August, representatives from Victorian community legal centres joined a roundtable event with the Victorian Attorney-General, the Hon Sonya Kilkenny, hosted by Eastern Community Legal Centre at Box Hill Town Hall.
This was the tenth sector roundtable, and the first since the Attorney-General also took on the role of Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, and was focussed on how community legal centres are working to address family violence, especially within health, youth and education service delivery.
The vast majority of the state’s 50 community legal centres are directly working within the family violence space, often alongside trusted services, at different points in a family’s life, to identify legal issues early and stop them from compounding.
Michael Smith and Marika Manioudakis from Eastern Community Legal Centre gave a presentation on the Mabels program, which integrates legal support within maternal child health services and has been operating for over a decade in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
A few years ago, the Mabels program expanded to a number of community health locations in Mildura, implemented by Malle Family Care Community Legal Centre, with positive results – demonstrating the scalability of community legal centre initiatives and the opportunity for them to be adapted to other areas across the state.
This presentation was followed by a panel on “meeting kids where they are through the school years,” covering school lawyer programs and other projects community legal centres are undertaking within education and youth settings, including a focus on how these programs tackle family violence.
The panel included Jackie Galloway OAM (Peninsula Community Legal Centre), Ellen Howard (Westjustice), and Debi Fisher (Hume Riverina Community Legal Service) who spoke about the positive impact targeted legal programs can have for children and adolescents, especially when they are integrated within existing school and youth support systems.
Community legal centre representatives and the Attorney-General also engaged in a positive and wide-ranging Q&A session covering a broad range of topics and our shared interest in building truly safer communities for all Victorians.
We thank everyone who attended the event, and particularly the Attorney-General. We look forward to continuing to work together to create positive change in Victoria.
