VLA is calling for expressions of interest to join the FDRS Chairperson panel, to provide VLA’s FDRS with family dispute resolution services.

VLA provides legal aid services to the Victorian community through our in-house practice, contracted private lawyers as well as by funding community legal centres. We have 15 offices across the state of Victoria.

We serve the broader community by providing information, legal advice, and education with a focus on the prevention and early resolution of legal problems. We prioritise more intensive services, such as legal advice, legal representation, non-legal advocacy, and family dispute resolution, to those who need it the most.

We recognise the intersections between legal and social issues in the way we do our work and advocate for change. We also work to address the barriers that prevent people from accessing the justice system by participating in systemic inquiries and reforms and strategic advocacy.

Our in-house practice covers four program areas, Criminal Law, Family, Youth and Children’s Law, Civil Justice and Access and Equity.

Victoria Legal Aid’s Family Dispute Resolution Service (FDRS) provides a lawyer assisted model of family dispute resolution, with in-house case management, to help people resolve family law disputes including parenting issues, division of property, spousal maintenance, adult child maintenance and international child abduction cases. This includes a child-inclusive Kids Talk program, which allows the child’s voice to be heard as part of the decision-making process.

To access FDRS, one party or an Independent Children’s Lawyer must have a grant of legal assistance. Parties may apply for dispute resolution before a court application has been made (early intervention) or after court has started (litigation intervention). Once both parties agree to go ahead, FDRS Case Managers then talk to each parent or carer by phone, assess whether cases are suitable for mediation and inclusion in the Kids Talk program, provide referrals, and arrange for conferences to be booked. These conferences are facilitated by FDRS Chairpersons. Kids Talk Services are provided by FDRS Child Consultants.

FDRS delivers services across Victoria, including to regional areas of high unmet legal need, and to a diverse and complex client group. Consistent with previous research, a recent collaborative planning project into unmet family law service delivery noted the complexity in the needs of family law clients, and barriers for certain client groups in accessing legal assistance, including people with experience of family violence, experience of significant financial disadvantage, women from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and people with a mental illness or who use alcohol and other drugs. It also highlighted several Victorian local government areas where unmet family law legal need was high, including Hume, Brimbank, Wyndham, and Greater Dandenong, and, regionally, Greater Geelong, Latrobe, Central Goldfields, Greater Shepparton, Swan Hill, and Mildura.

FDRS seeks applicants who are accredited as Family Dispute Resolution Practitioners with the Practitioner Registration Unit of the federal Government Attorney-General’s Department, who hold a degree in law, social work, or psychology (or equivalent qualification) and have substantial practice experience in their field, or otherwise have significant relevant experience in mediation. Experience working with separated families experiencing family violence and with other complex needs, in a trauma-informed way, is an advantage.