1. Women’s Legal Service
Remote Volunteering Project 2018

2. Why start a remote volunteer program?
40% of calls to our Statewide Domestic Violence HELPLINE were still going unanswered. For the women who did get through, we did not always have a legal appointment available to book.
We needed to find a way to maximise our response the numbers of women needing legal advice.
WLS is already very well established and has a large pool of volunteers from in and around Brisbane – we needed to look outside of Brisbane to increase our volunteer pool.

3. What we did
Developed IT infrastructure to enable eligible lawyers from all over QLD to register an interest to volunteer through the Remote Access Platform
Developed a data base of female family lawyers in Queensland.

4. How it works
The portal is accessed via the WLS website – click on Volunteer and Register.
Volunteers that meet the necessary criteria (eg. 2 years pae in family law + practicing certificate) are given access to the volunteer portal.
Eligibility criteria includes that the lawyer would not be foregoing volunteer commitments at their local CLC to volunteer with us.
Here they can create their profile (eg. biography details, upload photo, availability schedule, professional updates) in my details and complete their training. Their profile is managed by the volunteer.

5. Online Induction Training
Every volunteer has to complete each section:
Video 1 - Overview of WLS & Quiz
Video 2 - How to give telephone legal advice & Quiz
Video 3 - Domestic Violence & Quiz
Video 4 - How to log on remotely
Policies and Procedures
After all the training and quizzes have been completed the volunteer receives access to the calendar and feedback function

6. Availability This function is called Calendly
Volunteers can choose which day, date and time they are available to volunteer and ‘book in’
Can be undertaken at any location at volunteer’s discretion. Eg. home, office
WLS receives their available appointment times and client bookings are made through the WLS Helpline.

7. Secure Remote Login
Volunteers are given a unique password to access the server where they can view the electronic client intake forms for their appointments.
The lawyer records their advice using the electronic intake and signs electronically.
They then save the intake directly back on to the server for WLS supervising Solicitor to sign off.
We wanted to establish a secure portal otherwise we would have been ing client information that could have stayed on the solicitor’s computer and in their inboxes indefinitely.
We created this system to control all of client’s confidential information.

8. The expectations were:
Women’s Legal Service - Context
The pilot was funded by a one off grant by John T Reid Charitable Trusts
WLS was able to employ:
1 extra lawyer (2 days a week) to sign off advices and give legal support
Increase volunteer program manager hours
Develop online platform and remote server access
The expectations were:
Recruit 6 remote volunteers by June 2018.
Recruit 12 remote volunteers by December 2018.
Increase client advices by 3 per day by the end of the funding period.
This creates an additional 390 appointments available per year.

9. What actually happened

10. Monthly Remote Volunteering Statistics
The online portal launch dramatically increased the capacity of the remote volunteer program.
Online Portal Launched
Launched – July 2018
9 Volunteers already on roster
14 registered – yet to complete training
80 extra appointments have already been given (up to 20 August)
Because volunteers have the flexibility to book in whenever they had some spare time, volunteers were booking in for much more than the minimum of one session per month
Some volunteers have offered up to four times a week and some have committed to a weekly 2 hour slot
So far we have 9 remote volunteers on roster
There are 14 registered but who need to complete the training
We have a database of approximately 70 female lawyers who we have yet to directly target
Since the launch in July we have given 80 extra appointments (up to 20 August)

11. Daily Statistics Since Portal Launch
We are already achieving our goal of providing an additional 3 appointments per day, with 1-2 remote solicitors volunteering their time each day.
Our goal was to achieve 3 additional appointments per day by December but we are meeting that now so program would have more impact than expected and in a quicker amount of time.

12. Who are our remote volunteers?
We now have volunteers from:
BRISBANE
GOLD COAST
HERVEY BAY
KINGAROY
MAROOCHYDORE
ROCKHAMPTON
TOOWOOMBA
TOWNSVILLE

13. Who are our clients? Women from all over QLD can access our service.
We can provide telephone legal advice to women who meet our criteria – advice on family law, dv, child protection, sexual violence.
Remote appointments are generally ‘one off’ appointments to women who have not had contact with WLS before.

14. In order for the project to be successful it depended on:
Project funding
Support and commitment from the staff team
An effective and easy to navigate, secure online platform with strong IT support
Project manager to oversee and trouble shoot issues
Relationship manager to support and encourage volunteers to navigate through the IT platform and assist them with any issues that can arise from working remotely
If you get questions from the floor regarding issues and lessons learnt:
The back end of the platform is very basic and simple – if we had had a bigger budget, the back end could have been developed to be more effective in regards to information gathering and a database.
Performance managing, dealing with cancellations and IT issues all create considerable extra time and work from WLS admin end. This has been addressed at this stage by the increase in the volunteer program manager hours and the supervising solicitor but can the service absorb the extra work in its usual budget?

15. Remote Volunteer testimonials
“The portal/system is really easy to use and is just great! Whoever set it all up is amazing.”
“The training and resource materials were fantastic”
“Everything was efficient and the training was outstanding. If I forget something, I can go back and watch the training videos, rather than rely on my poor memory”
“I love the flexibility of this program. It is amazing.”