Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT has issued a call for support from the community to keep the vital service alive.
ALS NSW/ACT Principal Legal Officer Nadine Miles told National Indigenous Times on Tuesday that in 2024 the agency provided almost 141,000 services – including representing people at court, providing a lifeline for people in police custody through our Custody Notification Service, and "empowering families to keep their children safe, strong and connected to culture and their communities".
"We stood up for our clients in 117 courts across NSW and the ACT, amplified the voices of families who lost loved ones to deaths in custody, and established new holistic, wraparound programs, including branching out into civil law to support the communities we serve in even more ways," she said.
"Our teams work tirelessly to support the communities we serve, but we are scraping the bottom of the barrel for funding. A recent independent review into government funding for legal assistance services found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have the highest level of unmet legal need. For every person we assist, there is someone else about to knock on our door. We desperately want to help them too."
Ms Miles said that while the ALS has "hit the ground running" this year, it "can't achieve everything we need to without significant community support".
"Donations are crucial to top up our funding and keep our doors open for thousands of people who rely on us. Some services, like our NSW statewide Fines Clinic, are only able to run thanks to generous community donations," she said.
"To keep our services afloat in 2025, we are calling for 100 allies to pledge their solidarity by making a donation every month."
Ms Miles said donors can establish a monthly donation on the ALS NSW/ACT website and can set an amount that suits their circumstances.
ALS NSW/ACT said it has an ambitious plan to push the service's agenda for justice "even further" in 2025 including: supporting more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; doubling down on the agency's commitment to Closing the Gap and demanding that governments do the same; and "speaking out louder than ever before, ensuring our mob have a voice in the justice system".
