North Melbourne Agency Collective :: Free phone legal help during COVID-19

Local services, programs and agencies

29 April 2020

Free phone legal help during COVID-19

Posted by North Melbourne Language and Learning

Whilst our physical office is closed, Inner Melbourne Community Legal is continuing to provide free legal help over the phone to people experiencing hardship who live, work, study or are connected to services in the inner-city area.

This includes:

people on low income who live, work or study in the CBD, Docklands, North Melbourne, Carlton, Parkville, or West Melbourne
people who are connected to local community services like schools, family services and homelessness organisations
patients at our partner hospitals - the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Royal Women's Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
parties to intervention order proceedings in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court

To speak to our administrative staff, call 9328 1885.

Community organisations are instrumental in getting legal services to those in need

We have set up the following direct mobile numbers to our lawyers in order to facilitate referrals and encourage you to get in touch:

Health justice partnerships (hospital patients) - Maie Gibney: maie.gibney@imcl.org.au; 9013 0495
Youth outreach - Libby O'Dea: elisabeth.o'Dea@imcl.org.au; 0436 338 506
Homelessness outreach support - Lloyd Murphy: lloyd.murphy@imcl.org.au; 0436 276 526
Family violence and personal safety support - Indya McMahon: indya.mcmahon@imcl.org.au; 0436 194 513
Family law and employment support - Hannah Fesseha: hannah.fesseha@imcl.org.au; 0418 761 294
Tenancy - Peta Hodgson (Mon & Wed): peta.hodgson@imcl.org.au & Wallis Hamilton (Tues, Thurs-Fri): wallis.hamilton@imcl.org.au; 0409 372 810
Community legal education and advocacy - Nadia Morales: nadia.morales@imcl.org.au; 9328 1885

In these times of rapid change we are attempting to assist however we can

We are open to receiving enquiries on a broad range of legal areas, and if we can't help directly, we'll try to find who can.

We can help with the following legal problems, and provide information in additional areas as required:

family violence
personal safety
employment
debt/financial counselling
family law, including parenting
housing problems, like evictions and other problems with landlords
child protection
fines
criminal law
social security
victim of crime

In particular, we know that this crisis is likely to increase the incidence of family violence. Our lawyers can provide legal advice to both victim survivors and respondents to intervention order applications. It is important to get independent legal advice and we encourage all service providers to let people know that we can provide free, confidential phone help prior to court hearings.

We are also working with other organisations to advocate for systemic change on critical issues such as rental evictions, family violence and fines.

You can stay updated on our services and advocacy during the pandemic here:

https://imcl.org.au/news/organisation-updates/covid-19-update