Laywers are working with doctors, nurses and midwives in hospitals to advise victims of family violence.

InTouch, the Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence, will this week begin workingwith Dandenong Hospital to train hospital staff in identifying and responding to the clinical signs of family violence in women.

Staff will also be briefed on legal redresses for victims, including intervention orders, and social welfare services. The centre will also deliver cultural training to help clinicians understand their patients' experiences of family violence.

About 52 per cent of Dandenong's population was born overseas in non-English speaking countries, and migration and resettlement in difficult circumstances could provide a trigger for family violence, Maya Avdibegovic, the centre's chief executive, said.

"You have a reversal of [gender roles] ... women feel quite empowered to retrain and work, while men feel more vulnerable," she said.

Men could also feel "left behind" if they were unable to continue the careers they pursued in their home countries and were forced to take up lower-level jobs instead.

"It's important for health practitioners to have the understanding that those people have quite different circumstances and experiences, and that has a big impact on their experience of family violence."

Women were often comfortable talking to their doctors and may disclose more about any abuse tothem.

"This is one of the relationships that are out of the control of the perpetrator," Ms Avidebegovic said. "If the children are sick the woman will have to take her kids to the doctor, so there's a window of opportunity there for them to get assistance."

A lawyer from InTouch will provide free legal help at the hospital once a week to patients referred to them. A lawyer will also sit once a week at the Dandenong Refugee Health Clinic, as part of a two-year program funded by the Legal Services Board.

The move comes amid a growing number of partnerships between hospitals and legal centres that aim to bridge the gap between medical and legal help for family violence victims, who are often isolated as a result of their abuse.

Inner Melbourne Community Legal has given legal and family violence training to more than 180 staff at the Royal Women's Hospital since 2012, including 30 doctors. It also provides free legal help there up to three times a week.

The group targeted the Royal Women's Hospital because studies showed women were at high risk of family violence during pregnancy, with about four to nine per cent of women abused during pregnancy and/or after their child's birth.

The manager of the centre's "Acting on the Warning Signs" program, Linda Gyorki, said: "This gives women an opportunity to access information about their rights, to be able to take steps to empower them to leave that relationship."

Women who were thinking about leaving their partners may also need help with parenting plans, divorce proceedings, child support, and applications for financial assistance from the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal, she said.

Royal Women's Hospital nurse and midwife Kate O'Donnell said that the training helped her to pick up cues from her patients that she would not have previously have noticed. This included people who repeatedly turned up to the emergency department with urinary tract infections or reporting abdominal pain, with no obvious source.

"Repeated admissions for non-specific things might [mean] there's something else that she's trying to tell us but we're not asking the right question," she said.

The legal centre also provides free legal advice at the Royal Children's Hospital and Royal Melbourne Hospital's Waratah mental outpatient facility.