Inaugural ANZ-PBA Partnering Award winner announced

Just Healthy Families (JHF), a health justice partnership embedding free legal help into health and social service settings across Tasmania, has been announced as the recipient of the inaugural ANZ-PBA Partnering Award by a panel of six independent partnership brokers.

The JHF initiative aims to co-locate lawyers with health professionals, to ensure lawyers are routinely in the right place at the right time when clients need assistance from their trusted health or social service provider. The JHF partnership is a collaboration between two legal services (Women's Legal Service Tasmania and Tasmania Legal Aid) and three health and community partner organisations (Child Health and Parenting Services, Child and Family Learning Centres and Hobart Women's Shelter).

The ANZ-PBA Partnering Award celebrates cross-sector partnerships that demonstrate excellence in the management of collaborations between organisations, which address a social or environmental issue. In receiving the award, the JHF partnership will also be given professional development opportunities with PBA, up to the value of $6,000 (incl. GST).

Other finalists for the award were partnerships established by Our Watch and Victoria University (Prevention of Gender-based Violence), Inland Rail, TAFE NSW, Clontarf Foundation and Martinus Rail (First Nations Skills & Training), and Justice Connect and Telstra (Building Digital Inclusion and Legal Resilience).

PBA Associate, Julie Mundy said: “We received some impressive applications from a range of sectors. Just Healthy Families demonstrated a strong culture of openness between partners with the co-location of the JHF lawyers helping build trust between partners who could see first-hand the impact the service had on clients.”

ANZ Head of Social Impact and Community, Janet Liu said: “The ANZ-PBA Partnering Award was established to recognise effective cross-sector partnership practice in Australia. ANZ and PBA believe good partnering practice can lead to transformative change and sustainable relationships, ultimately delivering long term benefits for the Australian community.”

The Women's Legal Service Tasmania CEO, Yvette Cehtel said: “This project is a Tasmanian first, approached in a truly innovative way. We asked lawyers to step out of their comfort zones and try something new. As partners, we're honoured to have our vision and work celebrated through this award. Together, we know we can continue to achieve positive outcomes for the over 3,000 women we've assisted throughout the life of this project."

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Partnership Brokers Association (PBA)

PBA is an international professional body for practitioners managing and developing multi stakeholder and impactful cross-sector partnering processes. PBA works to develop the profession of partnership brokering by setting standards, building capacity and promoting good practice.