After about 30 hours of travelling and a weekend in Sydney, I made it to Hobart, Tasmania (in palawa kani: nipaluna, lutruwita) to start working with Youth Law Australia. Trying to beat the inevitable jet lag was probably the first time I used a Laidlaw value on my LiA: determination!

YLA are the only nationwide provider of free legal advice for children and young people under 25 in Australia. They get most of their funding from the Australian government, however, they are still a fairly small team when you take into account that they are responsible for all of Australia (which has six states and two territories, each with varying laws). Moreover, often the children and young people who reach out to YLA come from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, meaning that how lawyers engage with them varies significantly from the average adult client.

During my first week I met my two colleagues from YLA, Meg and Sarah, who I will be sharing an office with for the duration of my three weeks in Hobart before I move to YLA’s Sydney HQ for the final three weeks. This week we worked on finalising the key deliverables for my project (see below) and created a detailed project plan.

There are three key themes to my project: (1) best practice for children’s lawyers and developing professional capabilities, (2) service models and access to justice, and (3) outcomes measurement and evaluation. The first is about looking at what best practice looks like for children’s lawyers and creating an outline that YLA can follow to support them in being able to better help children who need legal advice. This will include comparing, contrasting and evaluating different guidelines and practice standards throughout Australia’s states and territories and the overseas jurisdictions of the UK, Canada, and New Zealand.

Next, I will be comparing, contrasting, and evaluating different service models (i.e. other children’s legal services) throughout Australia and the selected overseas jurisdictions to support YLA in determining how they can expand access to justice. As aforementioned, many of the children YLA support come from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, meaning that outreach in these communities is especially important to show children and young people that there are services available like YLA to support them.

Finally, I will brainstorm ideas for creating an outcomes measurement framework. Measuring success as a legal charity is not that straightforward. Most people want to conclude their legal proceedings as soon as they can because it can be quite a traumatic process, especially for children and young people. This makes it difficult for legal charities to ask for feedback and success is not always as easy as looking at the outcome of a legal proceeding. Therefore, creating a measurements framework that works alongside these nuances will be beneficial.

By the end of my six weeks, YLA have asked me to compile everything into a 20-page report that they can refer to after I have left. I will also present to everyone based in Sydney, including YLA’s executive, which is very exciting!

There have already been a number of challenges which have provided leadership growth. Coming to Tasmania itself, which is pretty close to being the exact opposite end of the earth from home, is definitely a challenge. My project with YLA is also quite ambitious as each of the three key themes I am working on could be six-week LiAs themselves. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to the challenge because I know it will inspire new growth in me as a leader.

Outside of my work with YLA, Meg and Sarah arranged for me to go on a guided food walk about Tasmanian Aboriginal cuisine, which was brilliant! I learnt about various plants and trees that the Aboriginal people in Tasmania use and we finished the walk by cooking up some Wallaby steaks with native Tasmanian spices (like the Tasmanian pepperberry!) I’ve also been introduced to Aussie Rules football by my housemate and have been enjoying the nature in Tassie!

View of Hobart from Mt Wellington / kunanyi