Justice Partnerships Research Articles

Health justice partnership: Access to justice meets health equity

Access to justice research identifies how unmet legal need arises from and exacerbates disadvantage. In parallel, epidemiological research identifies the inequitable impact of social determinants on health. Health justice partnership (HJP) is an innovative response to this evidence: providing accessible legal help to individuals experiencing complex needs; building the capability of health and legal services to support these clients; and challenging systemic factors that contribute to social and health inequity. HJP offers a broader view of access to justice, demonstrating how the law and accessible legal help contribute to health and wellbeing outcomes, and are part of the shared challenge of responding to health and social inequity.

Can we Break the School to Prison Pipeline through Partnerships? A Quasi-experimental Evaluation of the Effects of School Justice Partnerships

Can we Break the School to Prison Pipeline through Partnerships? A Quasi-experimental Evaluation of the Effects of School Justice Partnerships

Legal Needs Arising in Mental Health Settings and Staff Capability and Support to Respond.

Legal issues are known to affect and be affected by mental health. But to what extent do legal issues surface in mental health settings and what do staff feel they need to support clients experiencing these issues? These questions were explored by a national mental health service interested in the potential for health justice partnership with local community based legal services. A survey of 999 frontline staff of a national mental health organisation. 146 staff (15%) responded from 70 service sites across Australia, including peer support workers (47%), support workers (20%), team leaders (17%) and clinicians (15%). Staff identified a wide range of legal issues experienced by their clients (commonly referred to by staff as consumers), most commonly credit, debt and social security issues, housing, family law and family violence. Two-thirds (67%) of respondents indicated that they spent around 50% or more of their time 'responding to these types of issues'. Respondents indicated that they need more support to address legal issues facing their clients, particularly more knowledge of other services, connections with professionals in other organisations and connections with community. They also felt they could benefit from additional processes, tools, and resources, and time to manage their case load. While there is an emerging field of research exploring the legal capability of citizens, this study explores what mental health service staff feel they need to support consumers experiencing legal issues that can interact with mental health.

The Bar and the Bench: Partners in Justice, Not Opponents

The Bar and the Bench: Partners in Justice, Not Opponents

Can we Break the School to Prison Pipeline Through Partnerships?: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of the Effects of School Justice Partnerships

Can we Break the School to Prison Pipeline Through Partnerships?: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of the Effects of School Justice Partnerships

Exploring the Effects of School Justice Partnerships on Referrals to the Juvenile Justice System and School Exclusionary Discipline

Exploring the Effects of School Justice Partnerships on Referrals to the Juvenile Justice System and School Exclusionary Discipline

Strength and Uniqueness -The Ripple Effect of the BBM Health Justice Partnership Sharing of Knowledge and Increasing Empowerment

Strength and Uniqueness -The Ripple Effect of the BBM Health Justice Partnership Sharing of Knowledge and Increasing Empowerment

Lead with speed: Recasting the forensic laboratory product line and service delivery model

Forensic laboratories face a multitude of challenges when striving to deliver services to the criminal justice system. While many of these issues change over time, one in particular seems to endure the test of time … the need for faster results. Law enforcement wants and needs quicker response times to access critical information required to investigate their cases. One answer to this persistent problem is evolving technology. Technology not only permits a much quicker response than forensic laboratories are currently delivering, it can open the door to solving previously unsolvable cases. Along with applying new technology, an evaluation of current forensic laboratory product lines, service delivery models, and mindset regarding the role of forensic science-based investigative leads (termed forensic leads) is warranted. Resources and strategic planning are needed to realize the full potential of evolving technologies and what forensic laboratories can do to provide actionable and timely forensic leads to our criminal justice partners as a normal course of action instead of as an exception.This proposal is to establish a permanent, designated Forensic Lead Program (FLP) that resides under the umbrella of an accredited forensic laboratory and is tasked with the development and release of forensic leads. The FLP involves a focused menu of services, defined personnel roles, strict protocols, short turnaround time, standardized expectations, and targeted training, combined with the sense of urgency needed for consistent delivery of timely and actionable forensic leads. A dedicated FLP will save time and money by providing critical information for more focused investigations. ‘Speed is the need’ … for quick identification of those that threaten public safety and for the equally quick elimination of those wrongfully accused.Programs at two large state forensic laboratories will demonstrate how these concepts could be implemented along with their learning experiences. A business case will also be included to demonstrate the cost benefit of the Forensic Lead Program for DNA (CODIS – Combined DNA Index System) and NIBIN (National Integrated Ballistic Information Network), however other section services are expected to see similar benefits. Improving the response time by one day saves $1677.75 per $1 spent [1]. The return on investment (ROI) for applying DNA to firearms evidence returns $47.88 per $1 spent, or an 4,788 % ROI. Applying NIBIN (National Integrated Ballistic Information Network) to firearms evidence to provide investigative leads is $502.19 per $1 spent, which is a 50,219 % ROI. Recasting the forensic laboratory product line and service delivery model to ‘Lead with Speed’ makes both economic and investigative sense.

Capacity-Building for Successful Climate Justice Collaborations

Abstract The traditional environmental movement has historically excluded communities of color and ignored environmental issues of concern to them. This has impeded partnerships with climate justice communities and groups and perpetuated inequitable climate policies. For climate justice to be achieved, the traditional environmental movement must repair relationships, collaborate with climate justice communities on just and equitable terms, and incorporate climate justice into its agenda. These efforts will succeed only if traditional environmental organizations invest in building their capacity to engage in climate justice work, including training staff in new skills such as cultural competency. This article examines the barriers impeding climate justice partnerships and details the skills organizations must develop to overcome these barriers. The article then explores systems of accountability to hold organizations responsible for building their capability to engage in climate justice partnerships and recommends criteria to assess their progress.

‘Family court…sucks out your soul’: Australian general practitioners’ experiences supporting domestic violence survivors through family court

BackgroundDomestic violence is a significant public health issue with survivors experiencing short- and long-term physical, sexual and psychological health issues. Given this, survivors of domestic violence use healthcare services at an increased rate compared to the general population. Therefore, general practitioners (GPs) are well placed to support survivors of domestic violence. However, many practitioners do not feel ready to address this complex issue of domestic violence. Further, there is no research exploring GPs’ role in supporting families through family court in the context of domestic violence.MethodsThis study used qualitative methods. Fifteen GPs participated in individual in-depth interviews. The interviews were audio recorded with consent, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed.ResultsThe majority of participants were female GPs working in metropolitan settings. Four themes were generated from the data: on different planets, witnessing legal systems abuse, weaponizing mental health in family court and swinging allegiances. Participants had negative perceptions of family court and felt that it operated on a different paradigm to that of general practice which caused difficulties when supporting patients. Participants supported survivors through instances where the court was used by perpetrators to further their abusive behaviour or where the court acted abusively against survivors. In particular, perpetrators and the family court used survivors’ mental health against them in court proceedings, which resulted in survivors being reluctant to receive treatment for their mental health. Participants struggled with their allegiances within their patient family and usually opted to support either the mother, the father, or the children.ConclusionsImplications of these findings for GP training are evident, including curriculum that discusses the intersection of mental health diagnoses and legal proceedings. There may also be a place for health justice partnerships within general practice.

A health justice partnership for young people: strategies for program promotion to young people and youth workers.

Health justice partnerships (HJP) are innovative models for delivering integrated health and legal services to people experiencing complex issues. An HJP was established in regional Victoria, Australia, for young people. Promoting the program to young people and workers was essential for program uptake. There is a dearth of published information about strategies that support program promotion for young people and workers. In this practice and innovation paper, three promotional strategies were employed: a dedicated program website, secondary consultations, and legal education and information sessions. Each strategy is examined, with information presented about why and how these strategies were implemented alongside this HJP. The strengths and limitations of each strategy are explored, with some strategies appearing to engage audiences with the program more than others. The insights about each of the strategies established for this program may inform other HJPs with their planning and implementation for increased program awareness.

Health Justice Partnerships: An International Comparison of Approaches to Employing Law to Promote Prevention and Health Equity.

This article traces the development and growth of health justice partnerships (HJPs) in three countries: the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.

‎2023 First Research and Impact Evaluation Report of the Health Justice Partnership on ‎Mental Health and Wellbeing (BBM)- Addressing the Torment of Powerlessness: ‎ Bagaraybang bagaraybang mayinygalang (BBM): Empowering & Alleviating: A Health ‎Justice Partnership (HJP) of the Hume Riverina Community Legal Service (HRCLS) & ‎Albury Wodonga Aboriginal Health Service (AWAHS) offering legal support for social ‎& emotional well-being with

‎2023 First Research and Impact Evaluation Report of the Health Justice Partnership on ‎Mental Health and Wellbeing (BBM)- Addressing the Torment of Powerlessness: ‎ Bagaraybang bagaraybang mayinygalang (BBM): Empowering & Alleviating: A Health ‎Justice Partnership (HJP) of the Hume Riverina Community Legal Service (HRCLS) & ‎Albury Wodonga Aboriginal Health Service (AWAHS) offering legal support for social ‎& emotional well-being with

Health economics of health justice partnerships: A rapid review of the economic returns to society of promoting access to legal advice.

Welfare legal problems and inadequate access to support services follow both the socioeconomic and the health inequalities gradients. Health Justice Partnership (HJP) is an international practitioner-led movement which brings together legal and healthcare professionals to address the root causes of ill health from negative social determinants. The aim of this paper was to identify the current evidence base for the cost-effectiveness of HJP or comparable welfare advice services. A rapid review format was used, with a literature search of PubMed, CINAHL, ASSIA, PsycINFO, Medline, Cochrane Library, Global Health and Web of Science identifying 496 articles. After removal of duplicates, 176 papers were screened on titles and abstracts, and 20 papers met the eligibility criteria. Following a full-text screening, a further 14 papers were excluded due to lack of economic evaluations. Excluded papers' reference lists were scanned, with a further 3 further papers identified which met the inclusion criteria. A final pool of nine studies were included in this review. Studies focused on the financial benefit to service users, with only three studies reporting on cost effectiveness of the interventions. Only one study reported on the economic impact of change of health in service users and one study reported on changes in health service use. This review highlights the current evidence gap in evaluating the cost-effectiveness of adequate access to free legal welfare advice and representation. We propose that an interdisciplinary research agenda between health economics and legal-health services is required to address this research gap.

Addressing social determinants of health through legal services: The integration of a Health Justice Partnership into a Drug Treatment Clinic

The International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC) is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes original articles in the field of integrated care on a continuous basis.IJIC has an Impact Factor of 2.913 (2021 JCR, received in June 2022)The IJIC 20th Anniversary Issue was published in 2021.

Examining Relational Dimensions of Service Encounters for Disadvantaged People Who Use Drugs

Disadvantaged groups in general, and people who use illicit drugs in particular, have consistently been found to mistrust welfare services and service providers. Therefore, knowledge is needed on the relational aspects of service design that facilitate engagement and supportive relationships with disadvantaged consumers. We draw on qualitative interviews investigating the experiences of adults with histories of problematic drug use participating in a health justice partnership, to identify facilitators of engagement from the perspective of the consumers. Common relational facilitators of engagement were identified. These included embedding the service into the local community, foregrounding proximity and relationships in the service encounters, giving consumers' agency, priorities, and concerns primacy over program aims, and safe services acting as gateways to accessing a wider range of resources, services, and programs. The findings suggest that the centrality of relationships may be further heightened in services seeking to assist people in positions of severe disadvantage, including the drug and alcohol arena. In addition, the findings highlight the importance of services paying greater attention to how social and community embeddedness shapes experiences of inclusion and exclusion and designing services best able to accommodate this. This research contributes to the broader understanding of consumer engagement with services by developing a more nuanced understanding of consumer refusal and resistance to service engagement. These findings are important in the development of justice programs for disadvantaged people and people who use illicit substances specifically.

Intersectoral violence prevention: the potential of public health-criminal justice partnerships.

Building successful intersectoral partnerships to address health is critical to reaching health promotion goals. With the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increase in violence during the pandemic and the heightened demand for racial justice resulting from police killings of people of color, particularly young, black males, intersectoral public health–criminal justice partnerships must be more thoroughly examined. Violence prevention is both a public health and criminal justice issue, with public health systems emphasizing primary prevention and criminal justice systems addressing violence prevention at secondary and tertiary levels. Public health–criminal justice collaborations can provide an opportunity to seize upon unrealized violence reduction goals across the spectrum of prevention. At the same time, issues remain that are at odds across field boundaries as exemplified through community violence prevention. While there have been successful examples of such collaborations, past public health–criminal justice partnerships also demonstrate the challenges of working together. These challenges have yet to be systematically described and rooted in the larger literature on partnerships. In this paper, collaborative challenges are enumerated and evidence-informed strategies to overcome those barriers to achieve violence reduction goals are identified as a way to ground further intersectoral partnership work between public health and criminal justice.

Advancing Action on Health Equity Through a Sociolegal Model of Health.

In the field of public health, the law and legal systems remain a poorly understood and substantially underutilized tool to address unfair or unjust societal conditions underpinning health inequities. The aim of our article is to demonstrate the value of expanding from a social model of health to a sociolegal model of health and empowering health actors to use the law more strategically in the pursuit of health equity. We propose a modified version of the framework for the social determinants of health (SDoH) equity developed by the 2008 World Health Organization Commission on the Social Determinants of Health by conceptually integrating the functions of the law as identified by the 2019 Lancet-O'Neill Institute Commission on Global Health and Law. Access to justice provides a critical intersection between social models of public health and work in the justice fields. Addressing the inequities produced through the policies and institutions governing society unites the causes of those seeking to enhance access to justice and those seeking to reduce health inequities. Health justice partnerships (HJPs) are an example of a sociolegal model of health in action. Through the resolution of health issues with legal solutions at the individual level, the dismantling of service silos at the institutional level, and policy and law reform at the systemic level, HJPs demonstrate how the law can be used as a tool to reduce social and health inequities. Greater attention to law as a tool for health creates space for increased collaboration among legal and health scholars, practitioners, and advocates, particularly those working in the areas of the social determinants of health and access to justice, and a promising avenue for reducing health inequities.

A national survey of barriers and facilitators to medications for opioid use disorder among legal-involved veterans in the Veterans Health Administration

Background Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) are clinically effective at treating OUD among legal-involved populations. However, research shows that legal-involved veterans who receive care through the VHA have lower rates of MOUD use compared to non-legal-involved veterans. Education may be a key factor in intervention strategies to improve MOUD access. This study was a national survey of VHA staff to identify barriers to and facilitators of MOUD, as well as MOUD-related education needs for VHA staff, community partners, criminal justice partners, and legal-involved veterans. Method: A 98-item online survey was conducted to examine VHA staff perspectives (N = 218) around needed education, barriers to, and facilitators of MOUD for legal-involved veterans. Descriptive statistics were conducted and linear regression analyses were used to evaluate differences in perceptions by respondents’ current position at the VHA and their VHA facility’s rate of provision of MOUD among legal-involved veterans. Results: Respondents endorsed a need for education in all areas of MOUD (e.g., existing medications for the treatment of OUD) for VHA staff and providers, community partners, criminal justice partners, and legal-involved veterans. VHA staff perceived barriers to MOUD for legal-involved veterans to include stigma and complicated guidelines around MOUD and OUD treatment. Facilities with low rates of MOUD use highlighted barriers including MOUD conflicting with the philosophy of the local VHA facility and provider stigma toward patients with OUD. Perceptions of efficacy of MOUD differed by respondents’ current position at the VHA such that substance use disorder treatment providers perceived buprenorphine and methadone as more effective compared to Veterans Justice Specialists. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest a need for an educational intervention emphasizing the evidence supporting use of MOUD as a lack of knowledge about these medications was considered a barrier to access, whereas gaining education about MOUD was a facilitator to access. Education strategies specifically tailored to address VHA facility-level differences may help address barriers to MOUD experienced by legal-involved veterans.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors