Canada and its provinces are signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a convention obliging states’ parties to recognize and affirm the fundamental human rights possessed by all children. Among the Convention’s 45 substantive clauses is article 12, which requires that children “be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child.”
Admonitions to a similar effect are found in the domestic-relations legislation of most provinces and territories. In British Columbia, for example, Family Law Act s. 37(2) provides that parents and the court must consider the child’s views in determining the course of action that is in the child’s best interests. In Alberta, Family Law Act s. 18(2) says that the court shall consider the child’s views and preferences. The Ontario Children’s Law Reform Act s. 24(2) likewise provides that the court shall consider the child’s views and preferences in determining the child’s best interests.
Despite the near ubiquity of these directions, the mechanisms available for hearing the views and voices of children in family law proceedings vary enormously from province to province – and sometimes from case to case – as do the standards, training and methodologies those mechanisms employ.
Finding the Best Ways Forward is a two-day national symposium that will gather together a broad, multidisciplinary spectrum of leading stakeholders to share information and dialogue about how the voices of children and youth are heard, how their interests are protected and how their evidence is received in justice processes. The symposium is intended to generate innovative proposals for policy reform, best practices, and recommendations for future research about children’s participation in justice processes. Subject matter will include:
- the role of children’s counsel;
- the child in family law proceedings, child protection proceedings and youth criminal justice proceedings;
- the practical and legal effect of the Convention on the Rights of the Child within Canada; and,
- best practices for children’s legal clinics, representing children, judicial child interviews, and child interviews by lawyers and mental health professionals.
The symposium will be held on 15 and 16 September 2017 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Calgary. It is organized by the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family and the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate Alberta, and has been generously funded by a grant from the Alberta Law Foundation.
We encourage the participation of judges, lawyers and articled students; academics, researchers, graduate students and post-doctoral students; social workers, clinical psychologists, counsellors and other mental health professionals; and government decision-makers, policy-makers and administrators. Early bird rates, with special pricing for articled, graduate and post-doctoral students, are available until 3 June 2017.
A Call for Papers has been issued, and proposals for workshops are warmly invited until 7 April 2017. Potential topics include:
Best practices:
- the role of children’s counsel;
- best practices for children’s legal clinics;
- best practices for representing children;
- best practices for judicial child interviews;
- best practices for child interviews by lawyers and mental health professionals;
- establishing and operating children’s legal clinics; and,
- promoting legislative and regulatory change.
Child participation in justice processes:
- the child in family law proceedings, child protection proceedings and youth criminal justice proceedings;
- determining children’s competence and capacity to instruct counsel;
- the child in parenting coordination processes;
- roles for the child in mediation and collaborative law processes;
- children’s testimony, affidavits and letters in court processes; and,
- adapting court processes to accommodate children’s participation.
Child interviews and assessments:
- evaluative and non-evaluative views of the child reports;
- confidentiality of professionals’ communications with children;
- child interviewers on the stand;
- the role of early assessments and parenting assessments in family law and child protection proceedings;
- training child interviewers; and,
- establishing child interviewer rosters.
Children’s rights:
- children and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
- children and Canadian human rights legislation; and,
- giving effect to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The symposium will be preceded by a half-day conference which I will present on the fundamentals of family law in Canada, aimed at mental health professionals and any symposium participants not regularly involved in the family justice system. The conference will discuss the law on parenting and the care of children after separation, contemporary dispute resolution processes, and the traditional and emerging ways that the views and voices of children and youth are presented in those processes. It is intended to help set the scene and provide valuable additional context for the work of the symposium.
For more information about the symposium, or the pre-symposium conference, please visit www.findingthebestwaysforward.com or contact me at 403.216.0341 or jpboyd@ucalgary.com.
John-Paul Boyd is executive director of the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family in Calgary.