While the funding to improve pay for community legal centre workers and increase frontline staff in WA from July next year has been welcomed by the sector.... centres in Perth's outer suburbs say they're in dire need right now. One centre in Gosnells has staff trained and ready to be employed to meet its soaring demand.... but needs funding to make it happen.
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00:00Gosnell's community legal centre is doing the best it can with what it's got.
00:12Demand has increased five-fold in the last two years. The vital service in Perth's south-east
00:17only just holding on.
00:19So we opened a walking clinic every Tuesday morning to help people who couldn't get an
00:23appointment. We had 43 people lined up the other week by nine o'clock in the morning.
00:28It's catastrophic.
00:29The centre urgently needs more staff, but it can't hire them without more funding, despite
00:35people trained and ready.
00:37If we had the funding, we could employ staff right now. So our budget this year is $100,000
00:41in arrears because we can't afford to keep the staff we have, but we can't afford to
00:46let them go. The community needs them here.
00:49More than 350 frontline family and domestic violence staff were supposed to be employed
00:55nationally by June, but only 198 roles have been filled. In WA, only 22 of 38 positions
01:03have been filled.
01:05We're spending a record amount, and we're happy to continue to invest to support families
01:10and particularly children and women in danger in the community.
01:14Leaders from the sector say the funding announced today is welcome, but staff at this centre
01:19in Gosnells are concerned about how they will hold on until it arrives in 10 months' time.
01:25We will, wherever we can, prioritise women whose safety needs are really high, whose
01:31risk is elevated, to ensure their safety. But at the same time, we are also turning
01:37women away because we simply haven't got the capacity.
01:40We either have to reduce the amount of people we can provide a service for, or reduce the
01:44amount of service we can provide.
01:45A stark reality and stark choices.
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