About us
Who we are
Member organisations
- Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service Victoria
- Federation of Community Legal Centres
- Law Institute of Victoria
- Public Interest Law Clearing House
- The Victorian Bar
- Victoria Law Foundation
- Victoria Legal Aid
- Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service
VLAF's Main Forum executive is made up of representatives from each member organisation:
- Hugh de Kretser, Federation of Community Legal Centres, Chair
- Bevan Warner, Victoria Legal Aid, Deputy Chair
- Joh Kirby, Victoria Law Foundation
- Antoinette Braybrook, Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service Victoria
- Vacant, The Victorian Bar
- Fiona Mcleay, Executive Director, Public Interest Law Clearing House
- Mark Woods, Law Institute of Victoria
- Wayne Muir, Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service
The VLAF staff are:
- Rachna Muddagouni, Victoria Legal Aid (project manager).
- Simon Roberts, VLAF Project Officer
- Sina Oum, Project Support Officer
Main Forum representatives meet quarterly to discuss issues of relevance to the legal assistance sector.
Terms of reference
Aims
The forum aims to:
- advocate for increased access to legal services for socially and economically disadvantaged people
- continuously improve service delivery models by providers of legal assistance services to be responsive to unmet legal needs.
Strategy
We will meet these aims by:
- collaborating and developing effective partnerships
- networking and promoting co-operative service delivery arrangements
- recognising, consulting on, and responding to emerging issues, policy and law reform
- promoting dialogue and debate
- identifying and incorporating the best available research.
Principles of partnership
Forum member organisations will:
- respect each other's roles and acknowledge that these roles may lead to differences of opinion about particular issues
- recognise the independence of diversity of services and their approaches to legal service delivery
- where possible and practical, make open communication and consultation a priority, particularly where changes to policy or service delivery are considered or advocated
- be informed by a focus on real outcomes for disadvantaged people
- work by consensus in decision making and in promotion of VLAF activities whilst respecting the different roles of member organisations and their representatives.
Main Forum meetings
VLAF's executives meet quarterly to discuss issues of relevance to the legal assistance sector, such as:
- planning
- service delivery
- policy
- law reform
- activities of VLAF working groups.
2011 Meeting dates and minutes
Meeting Dates 2012
February, May, August, November
VLAF in 2009
View the VLAF Annual Report (PDF - 320kb)
