Knowledge Building Research - Barwon Community Legal Service

Knowledge Building Research

Real Life Research in Partnership – Understanding Civil Law Needs of Older People and Building Research Capacity in Community Legal Centres

In 2020 we received funding from the Victoria Law Foundation (VLF) as part of its Knowledge Grant funding stream for our Knowledge Building Project examining civil law needs of older people in our region.

The purpose of the Knowledge Grants is to support community legal organisations to better understand their data and use it to respond to community need.

Our project partnered with Deakin University and established a partnership with Deakin’s Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Program to embed virtual student research interns within our service to assist with the collection and interpretation of data.

Our research project aimed to:

  • develop a new understanding of the civil law needs of older people and barriers preventing access to legal assistance in the Barwon Region;
  • better understand referral pathways and service gaps for older people;
  • Strengthen our civil law and family violence services by incorporating this research into everyday practice.

The project also built an evidence-based framework for the collection, interpretation and application of available data, which we hope will result in an ongoing collaboration with Deakin to build our research and data capacity across other areas of legal practice.

In May 2022 we launched our research report capturing our findings and recommendations.  

You can access the Summary Report and Full Report below:

Real Life Research in Partnership – Understanding Civil Law Needs of Older People – Summary Report

Real Life Research in Partnership – Understanding Civil Law Needs of Older People – Full Report

For more information about this project please contact the community team.

Last modified on May 24th, 2022 at 12:52 pm

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