Since the World Health Organization’s groundbreaking Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008), the evidence has continued to grow about how factors beyond the medical drive poor health outcomes for individuals and communities. These factors include poor-quality housing, unstable or insecure work and family breakdown.

Meanwhile, in 2012 a landmark Australian study into legal need established that over one-fifth of people in Australia experience three or more legal problems in a given year, many of which cause illness. Many people seek no advice for these problems, but when they do, they are more likely to ask a non-legal advisor, such as a health professional, than a lawyer.

Taken together, the health and legal research points to common groups who are vulnerable to intersecting health and legal issues, but are more likely to turn to non-legal advisors, such as health professionals, than legal services for solutions.

Health justice partnerships respond to this evidence. In what has been a quiet revolution in service delivery, community lawyers have been collaborating with health services and their patients to address unmet, health-harming legal need. Since 2012 this revolution has grown from a handful of examples across the country to many. Now, through this report, we are able to identify the range of approaches, partnerships, settings and needs being met through health justice partnerships.

This report provides a first and foundational profile of the health justice landscape across Australia. It is based on information gathered in a 2017 survey, conducted by Health Justice Australia, of services across Australia that identify as health justice partnerships (hereafter, the services).

The survey illustrates a health justice landscape that has grown from seven services in 2014 to include now:

• up to 30 services operating in partnership, integrating a lawyer into the healthcare team in a health setting
• a further 18 services delivering a range of other service models such as: integrated services (health and legal services provided by one organisation); service hubs (health and legal services joined with other services in a community setting); outreach (with less intensive partnership arrangements and more autonomy than health justice partnerships); and student clinics (partnerships between law faculties and health agencies).

The services have been operating in almost every state and territory in Australia, however most are in Victoria and New South Wales. Across Australia, three-quarters of all services are in major cities.

Hospitals are the most common service setting, followed by community or public health service settings and Aboriginal medical or community services.

While some partnerships assist any patient of the health service, most focus on a particular client group: women facing domestic or family violence, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people with mental health issues, older people at risk of elder abuse or young people. Services most commonly provide legal help for domestic and family violence and for family and civil law issues.