Wisconsin community health centers look to help patients with legal needs
For the past two-and-a-half years, Wisconsin’s community health centers have piloted a program connecting patients facing housing instability and public benefits denials with legal support.
The community health centers involved in the pilot completed 3,461 screenings for “health-harming legal needs” and made 108 referrals for legal services in 2025, according to a report from the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnerships.
“Having a legal professional who treats them with respect and who is honest with them and direct about the issue they have going on, that’s bringing a real benefit to the patient,” said Richelle Andrae, associate director of government relations at the Wisconsin Primary Health Care Association, the state’s organization for community health centers and the grantee for the project.
NorthLakes Community Clinic and Noble Community Clinics, which serve central and northern Wisconsin, are participating and referring clients to Legal Action of Wisconsin, the state’s largest law firm providing free civil legal aid.
Even when an attorney can’t help with an issue, patients can lower their anxiety by talking through their issues and hearing about their options, said Katie Alft, managing attorney for Legal Action Wisconsin’s Oshkosh and Green Bay offices.
“People have reported a lot of satisfaction with the services and a sense of relief when they’re able to connect with an attorney,” Alft said.
The project started in February 2024 with a three-year grant from the Wisconsin Partnership Program, an endowment at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Project partners are looking for support to continue and expand their work.
Andrae and Alft recently spoke to Wisconsin Health News. Edited excerpts from their interviews are below.
WHN: What is the need for this program?
Andrae: The patients who community health centers serve face a lot of barriers and complex challenges in their lives that may have direct or indirect impacts on their ability to reach their full health potential, which is what we’re trying to do through community health centers. Often, community health centers will employ people like community health workers and navigators and have a community support structure where patients are already in dialogue with members of the community health center team about social drivers, social determinants, barriers to health, housing status, benefit changes or maybe a custody issues going on with their family. These issues come up organically, but we have never had a way to address the legal side of those concerns.
WHN: How does this program work?
Alft: The case workers at the health centers screen their patients for social needs such as housing instability; access to food and FoodShare; income, particularly related to public benefits; and potentially some other issues, like safety. They explore with them whether or not they could use some legal assistance with that. For example, if someone is facing eviction or losing a housing benefit, that’s something that an attorney or legal advocate could potentially help with. If someone is denied their disability benefits or if someone’s access to FoodShare has been cut off, that’s something where there could be a legal solution.
With the patient’s consent, they send us a referral. We follow up with them directly in the way that the patient or client prefers and is safe for them. That warm handoff is important. It can be very intimidating to work with an attorney. We’ve discovered that people have good, trusting relationships with their healthcare centers and their community health workers. That trust automatically, to a degree, transfers to us. That helps us build a rapport with those clients, which is always better to address their health and legal needs.
Once we get a hold of the client, we advise them. We potentially represent them in court. We decide on a case-by-case basis the level of service and what the appropriate interventions are, with the client’s input and their goals front and center. There’s also back and forth with their case managers and updating them on the case. It’s not a one-and-done handoff.
WHN: What have been the results?
Andrae: We have a great little snapshot of our program that we presented at a conference that has a bunch of the stories that I think are really beautiful. For example, in one of the success stories, a patient received an eviction notice because of some unpaid utility bills. It turns out that the landlord was mischarging the individual for utilities that they were not actually responsible for. The landlord was only communicating in English. The patient did not understand what the issue was. The attorney was able to intervene and not only address the issue about the eviction so that it was remedied and the individual wasn’t liable for any of those utility payments, but also to secure an order to seal the court record about that filing.
We also had an example of a patient who wasn’t properly noticed about their eviction. We were able to keep that individual in their housing. We’ve got another example where someone’s utilities were not functioning correctly and where a refrigerator wasn’t properly working, and that individual wasn’t able to keep their refrigerated medicine at a healthy level. That’s more of a direct impact on their health. The attorneys were able to work through getting that refrigerator fixed for the individual that they could not have done themselves with the landlord.
Alft: We’ve seen positive outcomes in terms of case outcomes with evictions being dismissed and benefits being obtained.
One thing that’s been notable is just the way we’ve been able to reach people. For folks who contact Legal Action through other means, like our regular intake line, we’re not always able to reach those people. That could be because they don’t have a stable address or phone number, or it could be because they have a lot going on in their lives, aren’t able to follow up or become disengaged. Having the caseworker and us involved together helps us make sure people don’t fall through the cracks.
WHN: What’s next for this project?
Andrae: Our hope is to at least maintain the existing program. It might see some new components too. For example, we’ve talked about having more education and community outreach work on behalf of the legal partners through the community health centers, like know-your-rights-type activities; educational events; and in-clinic, drop-in hours.
We might also expand the scope of the legal services that we’re providing. That could look like adding in some services related to estate planning. A lot of older adults, for example, have a lot of legal questions about their financial situation. That’s something that we currently don’t do. We also receive inquiries about family law, divorce and custody issues. Those cases tend to be extremely complex and long. It’s something we’ve been talking about that we haven’t done yet.
The other questions are whether we might expand to additional community health centers. That’s something that we are going to be exploring over the next year, especially if we see additional funding. There are some areas that could really benefit from civil legal aid services.
This article first appeared in the Wisconsin Health News daily email newsletter. Sign up for your free trial here.