(Vancouver, BC: Unceded Coast Salish Territories). The Family Legal Aid Expansion Engagement Safe, Heard, Protected: What We Heard Report shares the results of a collaborative community engagement process carried out by Legal Aid BC and the Centre for Family Equity to inform the development of a new wholistic, multidisciplinary intensive family law clinic model for those impacted by family violence in BC.
The community engagement found a number of key themes including the need to prioritize safety, the needs of families impacted by family violence, the unique challenges faced by Indigenous families and newcomers, and how poverty and material deprivation are barriers to accessing legal services.
This process followed the resolution of the Centre for Family Equity’s charter challenge in February 2024 with government’s announcement to invest 29.1 million over the next three years to transform the legal aid system. New and enhanced service delivery includes a multidisciplinary intensive family law clinic, changes to eligibility criteria, and additional hours of legal aid for eligible clients.
We offer our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to those CFE members and members of the public for trusting us with their deeply personal, traumatic, and often ongoing stories of challenges accessing legal aid while dealing with poverty and intimate partner/family violence.
We extend huge gratitude to the seventy-one survivors who came forward to share their experiences and help shape enhanced services that meet the unique needs of survivors. We heard from long-standing members who were with us throughout the charter challenge, new members, and many other individuals who came forward to participate.
Thank you to the many key outreach partners who worked closely with us to reach diverse participants across the province.
Thank you to our legal team led by West Coast Leaf with pro bono contributions from many talented legal minds in BC that shaped and contributed to the outcome announced in February.
And thank you to the diligent staff of Legal Aid BC for the opportunity to build a strong working relationship and collaborate robustly through the entire community engagement process.
We remain dedicated to advocating for systemic change that recognizes the barriers to family justice so many women, children and community members face. We look forward to seeing the roll-out of the new clinic model in 2024.