Building the Bridge to Health Justice: Our Role in the Merger of Palmerston and Sussex Street Community Legal Service
At ThirdStory, we believe the conditions for transformational partnerships don’t just happen. They’re built - deliberately, collaboratively, and often under pressure.
Over the past six months, we’ve had the privilege of working alongside two deeply values-driven organisations — Palmerston Association and Sussex Street Community Legal Service — to lay the groundwork for a new kind of partnership. What began as two distinct pieces of work has evolved into something greater: the foundation of a Health Justice Partnership that will change how care and support are delivered in Western Australia. A Health Justice Partnership aims to address the complex, multifaceted challenges faced by vulnerable clients with intersecting legal, health, and social needs by reducing service fragmentation, limiting cognitive load, and providing seamless, wraparound support at the point of need.
Two Tracks, One Goal
We approached this project as two parallel, interconnected streams.
1. Building the foundation for partnership
Our first focus was creating the enabling conditions for collaboration between Palmerston and Sussex Street — two organisations with different origins, cultures, and practice traditions, but a shared commitment to wraparound, person-centred care. We facilitated structured conversations to surface values, explore aspirations, and map out service synergies. This wasn’t about smoothing over differences — it was about finding common ground that could hold the weight of a bold shared future, with clarity and intention. The goal of this work was ultimately to foster the kind of alignment needed for a partnership to take root.
2. Strengthening Sussex Street’s service model
In parallel, we worked alongside Sussex Street’s leadership and staff on a rapid, deeply collaborative process of service refinement. As WA’s oldest community legal centre (except for Aboriginal Legal Service WA), Sussex Street has decades of incredible advocacy and client service work, and has been deeply embedded in the community of the south-east corridor. This work was aimed at supporting Sussex Street to communicate and maximise impact for clients, and equipping the team to clearly communicate and evolve their service offer to ensure strong positioning in an uncertain funding environment, and ultimately to create a 21st century model for stand out community legal services. Together, we developed:
A cache of tools to articulate service strengths and potential:
A co-designed Case for Change
Mini literature reviews of effective practice tailored to their client base/needs
Client personas and service user journeys
Service blueprint
Impact logic models, and data-informed service snapshots
A future-focused accreditation and improvement workplan
We worked in four intensive “sprints,” using an adapted Agile sprint approach that included daily stand-ups between ThirdStory and Sussex Street teams to stay connected, unblock challenges, and keep things moving. It was a big lift in a short period. As Sussex Street’s newly appointed Independent Board Chair Shayla Strapps has reflected, “Three years of work was completed in three months.” For us, the secret wasn’t speed — it was trust. We invested in deep, honest relationships that enabled real-time problem-solving and shared ownership of outcomes.
From Co-Design to Co-Stewardship
The strength of this collaboration has shaped a new phase of embedded work, with a ThirdStory Senior Project Lead working shoulder to shoulder with Sussex Street as Interim General Manager during a period of leadership transition. While the Interim GM title supports clarity and continuity internally, the focus remains on enabling and supporting existing leadership to stabilise, embed impact thinking, and strengthen service quality from within. This arrangement continues the spirit of co-design - grounded in partnership, trust, and shared purpose. It’s a rare privilege, and a testament to what’s possible when consultancy is based on partnership, not prescription.
A New Health Justice Partnership
On 1 July, Palmerston and Sussex Street formally announced their intention to merge — uniting to deliver an integrated model of legal, financial, housing, and disability support alongside alcohol and other drug (AOD) and mental health care.
As Palmerston CEO Emma Jarvis put it:
“This merger isn’t just about joining forces - it’s about breaking down barriers and building a future where no one falls through the cracks. We’re excited to work together for a healthier, more connected community.”
This Health Justice Partnership marks a significant step forward in whole-person care. It is the result of bold leadership from Emma Jarvis (CEO, Palmerston), Louise Forster (Chairperson, Palmerston), and Conrad Liveris (Chairperson, Sussex Street), who commissioned ThirdStory to support this journey. It also reflects the steady hands and vision of Sussex Street’s current leadership and staff, whose courageous collaboration helped shape the path forward.
We also acknowledge the invaluable role played by Shayla Strapps, an award-winning lawyer and long-standing innovator in WA’s community legal sector, whose guidance and insight helped shape the foundations of this work. Pro bono legal support has also been provided by Norton Rose Fullbright who have handled the technical aspects of the merger.
What's Next
As the merger moves from announcement to implementation, our work continues — grounded in the belief that genuine collaboration is the most powerful driver of systemic change. We remain alongside Sussex Street in this next chapter, continuing to support the people and systems that will bring this Health Justice Partnership to life.
For us, this project represents the best of what we aim to do at ThirdStory: walk alongside organisations during times of big change, help shape what’s next, and always keep clients and communities at the centre of the work.
This new partnership is more than a merger. It’s a blueprint for the kind of integrated, equitable service system we need: one that recognises the complexity of people’s lives and responds with humility, creativity, and care.
Project team
Jethro Sercombe Director Innovation Practice
Zoe O’Neill Senior Project Lead
Hélène Tholoniat Project Lead
Tallulah Chong Project Officer