Women’s Legal has achieved so much this year for women and children experiencing violence.

Our 2022 Impact Report shows demand for our services continues to grow as we work with communities across Victoria to see more women safe and recovering from family violence. 

Providing a lifeline to women in crisis

Our legal team of 25 gave free legal support and advice to 2160 women experiencing violence between July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022.  

From Mildura to Gippsland, more than 420 of the women we worked alongside live in regional Victoria.  

A quarter of the women we worked with received ongoing legal representation across courts, proceedings and negotiations and could work with our financial counselors and social workers to address other issues that arise due to violence such as debt, homelessness and poor mental health.  

Our in-house social work and financial counselling teams increased their caseload by 25% on the previous financial year. 

About 15% of the women, we worked with were homeless or at risk of homelessness, 61% financially disadvantaged.

Our clients

The vast majority (84%) of our clients told us that they ‘very much’ or ‘mostly’ felt listened to and understood when accessing our services and that we helped them make informed decisions for themselves and their family. 

You can read their storied by clicking through to our Impact Report here.

Women’s rights

We trained 1594 youth workers, financial counsellors, support workers, lawyers and community members to identify when a woman experiencing violence has legal issues and how to refer them for assistance. 

We made sure our country’s new National Plan to End Violence Against Women and their Children is robust and ambitious and influenced decisionmakers to create affirmative consent laws.  

We shone a light on the lived experience of mothers seeking the return of their children to their care from Victoria’s child protection system. And we’re leading the much-needed push for gender equality within Victoria’s legal and justice institutions.  

We send a big thank you to our team and partner organisations who show unwavering commitment to clients and our mission to build a gender equitable society.  

As we look ahead, scaling up our services to reach women sooner to prevent crisis is of great importance. Demand for our services will increase as the COVID-19 pandemic and hard economic times continue.  

We have a renewed sense that the time to act with, and for, women is now.