Your Story turns two: Our impact

Your Story Disability Legal Support two-year data snapshot (2019-2021)

In our first two years…

We received 4105 calls to the Infoline and 355 website and email inquiries.
Our Infoline team provided 2320 information services about how to access the Disability Royal Commission, Your Story Disability Legal Support and legal financial assistance.
They also made 388 referrals to other services, including the Disability Royal Commission and counselling and advocacy services.
In November 2020, we established a Prison Line to receive calls from people with disability in youth detention centres and prisons. Between 30 November 2020 and 30 June 2021, we received 676 calls from people in prison.
In total, the Infoline provided 2708 information and referral services to 1862 people. The majority of services (1784 services or 66%) were provided to people with disability, while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people accounted for 6% or 161 services.

Our lawyers provided 4609 legal services. This included legal advice services, support with private sessions and preparing submissions, and connecting clients with counselling, advocacy and other legal support.
We delivered our legal services by phone, video, face-to-face and in writing, travelling to remote and regional communities, mental health facilities, youth detention centres and prisons to run legal clinics and information sessions.
We also worked alongside the Disability Royal Commission as part of its face-to-face engagement in Queensland correctional centres.
Our lawyers supported hundreds of people, including many people with disability, their carers and family, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members, to share their story with the Disability Royal Commission.

We delivered 423 legal education events to over 20,000 people in the community. This included information sessions, submission workshops, expo stalls, and webinars.
We were flexible and creative in the way that we educated people about our service and the Disability Royal Commission, overcoming the challenges of COVID-19 to deliver a 740% increase in events between 2019-20 and 2020-21.
We also created 77 community legal education resources, including factsheets and videos. These resources are hosted on our website and YouTube channel, which have been collectively viewed over 67,000 times.
We travelled extensively, from Katherine (NT) to King Island (Tas), Broome (WA) to Ballarat (Vic), Pormpuraaw (Qld) to Port Augusta (SA), Darwin (NT) to Dubbo (NSW), Alice Springs (NT) to Armidale (NSW), Melbourne (Vic) to Mossman (Qld), and everywhere in between, to deliver legal services and education in the community.
We launched new social media pages on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to raise awareness of our service and to stay better connected with the disability community.

This data is for the period 16/9/2019 to 30/6/2021.