Daisy-May: Hi I’m Daisy-May Carty Cowling, I’m a senior family violence lawyer with the family violence program at Victoria Legal Aid, I work on the specialist family violence courts project, and today I’m talking to Holly-Mae Scoble, one of our information and referral officers.
Daisy-May: Can you tell us a little bit about how your role works day to day?
Holly-Mae: Yes, so one of the best things about my role is that it’s really dynamic and it can change every day. So some days I’ll spend a lot of time working directly with clients, they might have court coming up or they might have already been to court recently and they just want to ask some questions. I’ll also spend a lot of time talking to people from our community legal centres, Victoria Police, or other stakeholders like the registry staff. So it’s a really dynamic role and it can change every single day which is one of the best parts about it, and that’s why I think the role works so well.
Daisy-May: What does information and referral mean to the people that you help?
Holly-Mae: Sometimes people are really just looking for information about the court process, or information about the legal system in general. What they need is actually just someone to give them a little bit of information and someone to ask questions. And then there’s of course the referral side of things. People might need referrals to other support services, like social welfare sort of things, like drug and alcohol, housing, mental health or men’s behaviour change programs for example. And what they really need is someone to just support them in that process, to make a warm referral on their behalf or to actually call an organisation and make sure that they’re eligible and that they’ve got a place for them. And then of course people also need referrals to other legal services, so people don’t always need to access VLA services, there’s actually a whole wide world out there of other legal support services that are available so I’ll support them in accessing those as well.
Daisy-May: What’s the most satisfying part of the role?
Holly-Mae: Oh, for me I get a lot of satisfaction out of helping people navigate this system, it’s actually a really tricky system, we work in it every day so we don’t often sort of appreciate how complex it can be but for someone who’s never been involved with police or the criminal justice system or the justice system as a whole, it’s really confusing. So someone called me recently and said, they were, you know, beside themselves in tears and they said, my matter’s been stood down, I don’t understand why it’s been thrown out of court, you know this was an affected family member who’d gone to great lengths really to arrive at court that day, she’d spoken to police and gone through the trauma of that process, only to come to court and to hear that her matter had been stood down and she didn’t understand what that meant, because that’s actually legal jargon, so she was really upset. And when I explained to her, oh actually a matter being stood down just means we’re taking a break, the magistrate is going to go off and take some time and we’re going to regroup and come back, that was such a relief to her to just understand it hasn’t been thrown out of court, we’re just taking a break. So I was able to really alleviate a lot of stress for her and that’s a really simple thing that I can do to help.
Daisy-May: What have people told you about the difference that you’ve been able to make for them?
Holly-Mae: I think one of the biggest bits of feedback that I get and one of the most positive is really that I helped people a) navigate a really complex system but b) that I’ve been the only person that’s actually taken some time to just listen to what their enquiry is. People are often coming to me having called five or six other people not really gotten an answer or the support they actually need to resolve their issue. They’re finding themselves on that referral roundabout that we always talk about, so I really aim to be the end point, and to close that loop for people and to find a resolution to their problems, so they can just move on, and it’s often something really simple that I can solve pretty quickly so it’s just about taking that time, so yeah I get a lot of positive feedback about that. I really like to hear when people say they understand the system better because I’ve explained something to them. For me, it’s really important that people can advocate for themselves in the future, and I guess another really positive part of my job is that I can just be a person that people can come back to if they need to. It’s nice to just be able to give someone my name and number and say, look pick up the phone if you have another question and I’ll help you out again.
Daisy-May: As you work at a specialist family violence court, what are some of the things you can do to help people who have family violence issues beyond an intervention order?
Holly-Mae: Another really good thing I can do for people is support them if they’re going through a criminal law process and they might have accompanying family violence issues or a really good example is people who are going through criminal law proceedings but they’ve got family violence related charges that’s a really common one. Another way I can help is by helping people link in with support services and that will help the Magistrate see they’re actually taking these charges seriously and they want to do something to change their behaviour. So for example I could link them in with a men’s behaviour change program and that might actually satisfy part of the conditions of their bail for example, so in that way I guess I can help the criminal law team and our criminal law clients as well.
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