‘Saying no has an enormous impact’: overwhelmed community legal centres forced to turn away clients

New clients are rarely accepted at Inner Melbourne Community Legal centre, where lawyers say the pressure of handling the cases they already have is becoming overwhelming.

But there are always exceptions.

Like a woman dubbed client two: the single carer for five children in a nearby public housing tower and a victim of family violence, who has about $14,000 in outstanding fines, many of which were incurred by her abusive partner.

Then there's client six, living in public housing with six children, who made a complaint about mould in the property, which she says only resulted in the area being wiped and painted, and her being served a breach notice.

Or client eight, with outstanding criminal, family and tenancy law matters, who is homeless with a 16-month-old, and pregnant.

In the almost perverse stocktake the centre has to do of those in need, these are the clients who are marginalised in enough ways, and in enough immediate peril, that the centre decides they cannot be turned away.

"Saying no has an enormous impact not just on the client but on the staff," said Nadia Morales, the director of strategy, engagement and projects at Inner Melbourne Community Legal.

"The impact of having someone incredibly distressed, in crisis, upset, telling you their story, so you can make a decision on the help they need, and then to [tell them] that [they] can't be assisted is really challenging, I have to say.

"But we have had to cease taking on ongoing caseload, because we're just at capacity."

Guardian Australia spent a day inside this centre, and another day with a duty lawyer assigned to family violence cases at the Melbourne magistrates court, to gain an insight into a sector that many warn is at breaking point.

The acute strain community legal centres say they are under does not manifest in the way you may imagine.

There are no queues snaking out the door. Phones don't ring constantly. It is less pressure cooker than sauna; a slow heat that creeps up, until you struggle to breathe.

This pressure means that only a client with exceptional circumstances can be helped.

"Our guidelines are already really narrow, they have to be. We're already prioritising the neediest of the needy, and now we're not even able to really support them properly," Morales said.

"We're basically making the assessment that: if not for us, would they have anywhere else to go, and to what extent will they be able to self-help, if at all?

"And that's really because the funding situation is precarious, staff are feeling pretty stressed and overwhelmed."

Inner Melbourne CLC relies on state and federal governments for its core funding, and then applies for grants for shorter-term projects, and receives philanthropic support.

Community Legal Centres Australia (CLCA), which represents about 180 CLCs, noted in its response to the recent federal budget that it was the first opportunity of the Albanese government "to deliver on its pre-election commitment to increase investment in community legal centres and improve access to justice".

The government delivered on key promises, the CLCA said, but future budgets would need to commit more if people were to get proper legal support.

In the 2022-23 financial year, Inner Melbourne CLC helped 1,040 people, 88% of whom were experiencing financial disadvantage.

More than half of its clients were experiencing or at risk of family violence, and a similar percentage were living with a disability.

Morales says that the sector's contribution to legal work should be thought of similarly to the role bulk-billing GPs play in the healthcare system. Michelle Reynolds, Inner Melbourne CLCs policy and advocacy lead, agrees.

And in the same way as Covid exposed flaws in the health system, it is starting to impact on the legal sector, too. The current wave of rate, energy and rent prices hikes are also a contributor.

"As we see more people struggling to make ends meet, more people struggling to pay rent, those pressures put more pressure on us and our services," Reynolds says.

"You can't overload [our lawyers] to the point where they might miss stuff.

This is why they have stopped taking new clients, Reynolds says. Her frustration is that if they were funded to do more, they could reduce the pressure on the entire ecosystem of services their clients typically rely on, including hospitals, schools and housing providers.

"We make sure that we finish with a client [after] we've started. That's why it's better to have a client freeze so that we can see things through.

"[But] our work actually takes pressure off systems that are already under pressure."

The courts are one such system.

The sixth floor of Melbourne's magistrates court building is given over to family violence cases, and on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, Indya McMahon, a senior lawyer at Inner Melbourne CLC, is on duty.

She will work through a client list of between 50 and 80 people, with the assistance of two other duty lawyers, on their matters before the courts that day.

Their names are shouted out over a loudspeaker, not unlike, as one person in the building says, they're waiting at Centrelink.

Not all of these people will need to be in court, and some will fail to show, but most days McMahon says she helps between seven and 10 people with a range of issues, including asking the court to vary police orders, or seeking tougher conditions.

She has done so many cases that occasionally, she says, she can "smell the risk" a woman is in, and take an extra effort to connect her with services that may make her safer.

One of the women McMahon has recently assisted, who cannot be named for legal reasons, says she would have had to abandon her case if the CLC had not come to her aid.

The woman, who identifies as Aboriginal and is a victim of family violence, is seeking custody of a child.

"I needed a lawyer," she says.

"I'm a single mum, I can't find the money even though I'm working to fork out for a private lawyer.

"Without Indya, someone in my position, I honestly don't know what I would do."