Australia: Inside the growing push for more drug courts in regional NSW

New South Wales public defender Talitha Hennessy has spent her career working with people caught in the justice system — many shaped by childhoods scarred by trauma, addiction, and abandonment.

At a roundtable in Wollongong on Wednesday night, where the ABC and other local media were invited to observe, Ms Hennessy joined senior members of the judiciary, government, local councils and unions to discuss what it would take to establish a drug court in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven.

Speaking after the event, Ms Hennessy said it was not uncommon for clients facing serious charges to have grown up in homes where drug use was normalised and in some cases, where children were exposed to drugs by their own parents.