National Homeless Persons’ Week 2010 is on now and runs until Sunday. It aims to raise awareness of homelessness in the community, celebrate and acknowledge current services being offered to homeless people, foster collaboration of services working with the homeless and attract more volunteers and financial support into the sector.
Everyday this week during my morning radio programme I’m speaking to people who serve Perth’s homeless community. Today’s guest was Tahnee Davies who is Board Member of Street Law.
Tahnee is a lawyer who is actively involved in helping to launch an independent free legal service for homeless people in Western Australia under the Street Law banner.
Street Law’s priorities over the last few years have been focused on obtaining seed funding for the centre. Finally late last year funding for the employment of a principal legal officer, an administrative officer and other administration expenses was secured from the WA Attorney-General.
Even prior to the funding grant, Street Law devoted a great deal of time to drafting administrative and legal manuals and creating partnerships with commercial law firms so that once funding was obtained, the service could be fully operational in a short period of time.
Street Law also entered into discussions with other homeless person’s service providers to determine appropriate locations for outreach legal services.
The Street Law service will be officially launched later this year.
To hear our discussion simply click the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.
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