Goulburn Valley Community Legal Centre

Goulburn Valley Community Legal Centre is based in Shepparton and provides free legal information, advice and representation services. It serves people living in Northern and North East Victoria. ARC Justice incorporates Loddon Campaspe and Goulburn Valley Community Legal Centres and Housing Justice. ARC Justice's legal entity is Advocacy and Rights Centre Ltd, trading as ARC Justice. ARC Justice provides legal help and tenancy advocacy services to people in Central and Northern Victoria.

Housing Justice stands up for the rights of tenants, helping people to solve their tenancy problems and stay in their rental homes. The Bendigo Family Violence Justice Project was formed in 2019 with a grant from the Frances and Harold Abbott Foundation. The project has assisted 254 women. It involves a lawyer from LCCLC co-located at the CNV office providing integrated legal support to women affected by family violence.

The BFVJP lawyer provides legal help with intervention orders, family law parenting and property matters, child protection, and civil law matters commonly associated with family violence such as housing, credit and debt. LCCLC and CNV have been working closely with The Orange Door in Bendigo to strengthen referral pathways for women in need of legal assistance. The project is supported by the Frances and Harold Abbott Foundation and W.C.F. Thomas Trust, administered by Equity Trustees. ARC Justice's main services are legal help and tenancy advocacy services.

Helpful advice and polite, prompt responses stand out in the feedback on this Shepparton service, where a handful of customers describe the information given as current and the reception they received as courteous. Recurring accounts also point to difficulty reaching the centre by telephone, with one caller describing an inability to get through during a lunch break and a return call that arrived at an inconvenient moment; that conversation reportedly ended poorly and without practical help. A further theme concerns the scope of assistance, with one account questioning whether criminal law matters are handled at all and suggesting the focus rests on family violence work.

The centre appears in the data as a general practice attorney and legal services provider, and the matters named in feedback are limited to those areas. Staff are repeatedly described as friendly and approachable, and the advice itself is valued, yet accessibility by telephone and the range of matters accepted emerge as the points where expectations and experience diverge. Family violence work, alongside the calls that go unanswered or ill-timed, forms the pattern running through how customers describe their dealings with the centre.