Helping Community Legal Centres measure their impact

The services Community Legal Centre’s (CLCs) offer NSW, and Australia more broadly, are vital.

These independent non-governmental organisations deliver free legal services to people and communities, providing a helping hand at a time when individuals need it most.

After decades of cuts by state and federal governments in funding for legal services such as legal aid, CLCs have become increasingly significant in providing these essential services to members of the community.

Unfortunately, justifying their continued funding and viability, and demonstrating the value of their services, has become increasingly difficult due to a lack of resources to help them measure and evaluate their social impact. This is something Honni van Rijswijk, Maxine Evers and Penny Crofts from UTS Law were determined to tackle. To do so they joined forces with Marrickville Legal Centre (MLC) with the aim of helping them develop their own framework for social impact measurement.

“Maxine and Penny have experience with CLCs and a general understanding of the importance of impact frameworks to the sector,” said project co-lead Honni.

“Through their particular connection to MLC we gained an understanding of the significance of this type of framework for the centre. When the opportunity to apply for a UTS Social Impact Grant came up, Maxine approached me to form a team. When we found out we had received the grant, we were all very excited to be able to help MLC,” she said.

The MLC was established in 1979 with the purpose of helping the local community, mainly from non-English speaking backgrounds, to access affordable legal help and advice. It now services close to 1.1 million people across 12 local government areas with general legal advice, as well as a tenancy service, a domestic violence support and referral scheme, an evening legal advice service and a youth legal service.

Using the funding they received from their Social Impact Grant, Honni, Maxine and Penny hired UTS student Chris Anderson - who also worked at MLC - as a research assistant.

“I could ask him specific, detailed questions about how systems worked as we developed the framework, and he had a sense of what would and wouldn't work which was invaluable to the process,” Honni said.

The team consulted with MLC to better understand their needs within the context of their clients and local community, and looked at existing frameworks used by CLCs to measure the social impact of their services.

“We looked everywhere!” Honni said. “We really wanted to find all the information out there. The literature in Australian states and territories is just emerging, so we paid particular attention to the UK and have also looked beyond just public reports to those commissioned and written by private firms as well.”

The team also did research into the non-legal sector, specifically the health sector, to see how they went about measuring their impact.

Once all of this was complete, discussions with MLC about exactly what they wanted from this framework began.

“MLC emphasised that they needed something very specific to their needs, small-scale, and something that wouldn't add on to their resource demands, which are already stretched. They also emphasised that they couldn't ask questions that could have potential ethical implications. We designed the framework based on these parameters.”

Since the development of their framework, MLC has added questions with an impact focus to their client intake process. Their plan is to follow up with clients regularly, which should provide useful insight into whether the framework is working.

Honni, Maxine and Penny are now also participating in the CLC NSW’s Impact Evaluation Project Advisory Group for the development of the NSW-level framework. They hope MLC’s framework can act as a prototype for the state-level equivalent.

“So far we’ve participated in in-person and phone meetings, and have shared our experience with MLC with other CLC members, which both the CLC and general members have found very helpful,” Honni said.

“Since the CLC NSW framework is planned to be completed by the end of this year, the next stage [will] be to look at how the state framework [could] fit with MLC’s individual framework. When we set it up the idea was that it would be adaptable rather than compete with the NSW framework.”

And when asked what her highlight from this whole experience was? “Just helping MLC with their work. I loved it. They do such a fantastic job and it’s wonderful to be able to help them highlight that work.”