This March, the members of the Youth Voices Leadership Group are participating in a two-part virtual event hosted by Access to Justice BC and the Representative for Children and Youth of BC. The Child & Youth Champions event is part of the multi-sector Transform the Family Justice System (TFJS) Collaborative that is focusing on achieving […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
Two years ago I published a piece on slaw.ca entitled Seeing (And Feeling) the Family Justice System Through the Eyes of the Therapy Dog about Ollie the therapy dog who visited the Kamloops courthouse on “family remand day”. One comment on that post really stuck in my mind. It was from a family lawyer who […]
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 […]
This is a reminder to complete two important surveys affecting access to justice in British Columbia: The National Action Committee’s annual survey – deadline extended to January 17th. This is your opportunity to have your A2J initiatives included in the 2019 Report on Canada’s Justice Development Goals. The Law Society of BC’s Futures Task Force […]
In the summer of 2019, the Lab received a very warm invitation to work with a group from Ulster University in Northern Ireland. Led by Professor Gráinne McKeever, the group was eager to use a human-centred design process as part of their research project to create and test supports for litigants in person (“LIPS”) in […]
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 […]
In our last post we highlighted the need for any justice design (or reform) initiative to start with a deep dive into the user experience and to involve users throughout the process. The image of the flashlight on a dark night is a stark reminder of how opaque and terrifying the current system can be […]