Community Legal Centres Queensland State Conference 2021

The wellbeing of our community legal centre workforce has come into increasing focus over recent years, and the COVID emergency has thrown an even more intense spotlight on these issues. As we develop ever deeper understanding of the negative effects that stress, burnout, trauma, workload and poor employment practices can have on individual workers (whether paid or volunteer), the obligation upon centres to ensure that our people are provided with a working environment that supports their physical and psychological wellbeing will only continue to increase.

In this session we will hear from Yvette Cehtel, CEO of the Women’s Legal Service Tasmania (WLST), about the change process she has led to transform WLST’s approach to supporting and engaging staff, including a MOU with Relationships Australia, Tasmania, for ongoing external supervision services for all staff.

In the second half of this session, Yvette will be joined by Michelle Robertson, Senior Industrial Officer at The Services Union and Karina Maxwell, a Social Worker at the Workers’ Psychological Support Service, for a facilitated Q&A session with audience members to explore different aspects of workforce wellbeing.

This session is available for in-person and online attendees.