TEWLS provides specialist, holistic, and culturally secure legal advice and representation, community legal education, and advocacy in the areas of civil, migration, and family law to women, and non-binary persons, living in the Greater Darwin region.
In the Top End of the NT, TEWLS is one of six (6) free legal assistance services and the only gender-specific service. TEWLS is also a specialist domestic, family, and sexual violence service.
TEWLS provides free legal advice in most areas of civil, migration, and family law to all women and non-binary persons in the Greater Darwin region, including legal information and referral services. TEWLS also provides casework and representation services on a case-by-case basis.
TEWLS is committed to raising awareness and understanding around the rights of women and non-binary persons, legal processes and the legal system, and what services are available within the community. We are committed to sharing our expertise to empower women with knowledge and information, with those women increasingly able to make informed decisions about their legal issues. We believe community legal education (CLE) is crucial in increasing access to justice and redressing gender inequality.
CLE can take a number of forms including informal conversations, formal presentations and workshops, and the creation of informative resources.
Integral to TEWLS’ work in ensuring better outcomes for women are our contributions to law reform, policy, and systems change. We engage in law reform and policy work on a broad spectrum of matters important to our clients and areas of service, advocating for targeted changes to the law and associated policies and regulations, as well as systemic change on both a local and national level.
TEWLS acknowledges that we work on Aboriginal land, including the lands of the Larrakia people, who are the traditional owners of the land where our office is located. We acknowledge the Larrakia people as the Traditional Owners of the Darwin region and pay deep respect to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We are committed to a positive future for the Aboriginal community. Always was, always will be.
