Category Archives: child rights

Kids Deserve to Have a Voice – Part One

The Youth Voices Initiative partnered with Adler University to provide a 3-hour online workshop on April 1, 2022. The workshop was generously funded by the Notary Foundation. It focused on providing Adler students (future counsellors and therapists) with insight into the impact of separation and divorce on children and youth and the importance of meaningful […]

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Youth Voices: A Call to Action for Family Lawyers and Mediators–Part 2

This is Part 2 of a two-part piece focusing on how family lawyers and mediators can participate in and support the Youth Voices Initiative. Originally published on Slaw.ca, Canada’s Online Legal Magazine and republished with permission. In Part 1, I described the foundations of the Youth Voices Initiative, overseen by the BC Family Justice Innovation Lab, which […]

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Youth Voices: A Call to Action for Family Lawyers and Mediators–Part 1

This is Part 1 of a two-part piece focusing on how family lawyers and mediators can participate in and support the Youth Voices Initiative. It was originally published in September 2020 on Slaw.ca, Canada’s Online Legal Magazine and republished with permission. It has been 10 years since Brené Brown published her book The Gifts of Imperfection. […]

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Youth Voices Initiative Update – Launch Coming Soon!

It has been a few months since our last update on the Youth Voices Initiative (March 7).  The world has changed in fundamental ways since then!  But we have been continuing our work and we’d like to describe some of the highlights so far and provide a peek into the exciting things coming next!! The […]

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Youth Voices Article, Update & more

Our friends at Access to Justice BC (A2JBC) wrote and published a story about the Lab’s Youth Voices initiative. We are grateful for the shoutout and for the support! Our funding from the Vancouver Foundation and Giving Well has carried the Lab through four wonderful years. We are so grateful for their support! While that funding […]

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What is Old is New Again – Lessons from To Kill a Mockingbird

I watched “To Kill a Mockingbird” again recently. As most of you know, Harper Lee wrote the novel, and the 1962 Academy Award–winning movie features Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, a small town lawyer who defends a black man accused of the rape of a white girl. There are so many important themes in this […]

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Youth Voices Narrative Workshop – Output and Observations

In our February post we promised to provide more details about some of the insights coming out of the Youth Voices Workshop in January.  I believe it is too early for true “insights” – they will come from the next stage of our work (discovery). However, I can report on the actual output from the […]

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Putting the Public First – Part 5

This is the fifth in a series of posts about HOW we can begin to put the public first in justice design. In the family justice system we rarely hear the voices of children who are experiencing the separation or divorce of their parents.  Despite the legal principle that the “best interests of the child” […]

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