Helping People Navigate the Justice System: An Evaluation of Legal Aid BCs Community Partners

Description

In this session, the speakers provide a brief introduction to their 26 community partners and explain the process and findings for their recent evaluation of the program. The evaluation examines how services are provided across the province to marginalized individuals looking for help to identify and address their legal needs implementation plan.

The report was done in two parts:

Evaluation of Community Partners Report (Jan 2022)

Evaluation of Community Partners Report, Part 2 (Jan 2022)

This part of the evaluation consists of stories collected from CP locations, as qualitative examples of the impact of providing the Community Partner service.

Links: https://legalaid.bc.ca/;  https://legalaid.bc.ca/sites/default/files/2022-02/Evaluation-of-Community-Partners-Report-Part-1-%28Jan2022%29_0.pdf; https://legalaid.bc.ca/sites/default/files/2022-02/Evaluation-of-Community-Partners-Report-Part-2-%28Jan2022%29_0.pdf

Speaker Bio

John Simpson is a lawyer, and Manager of Community and Publishing Services (CPS) at Legal Aid BC. These services include public legal education and information through free print publications, websites, community outreach and training. John has worked in this field for the last 14 years. Before that, he managed other Legal Aid BC programs and was a poverty lawyer at legal aid offices.

Tim Roberts (he/his) has over 40 years’ experience in law-related initiatives. He co-founded one of B.C.’s first Community Law Offices and was a writer of numerous PLEI materials and teachers’ guides on law-related themes. For the past 30 years he has directed research and evaluations for federal, provincial, and territorial governments, non-profit organizations, foundations and government funded agencies, examining court initiatives on civil, family and criminal matters, delivery of legal aid and advocacy services, public legal education initiatives, pro bono initiatives, victim services, restorative justice and a wide range of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. He has participated in access to justice measurement initiatives since 2012, first as part of the Prevention, Triage and Referral Sub-Committee of the National Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, for which he was a joint writer of the sub-committee’s report. With support from the Law Foundation of BC and through the A2JBC Measurement Working Group he assisted with the development of the Access to Justice Measurement Framework, for which he wrote a user’s guide. He has facilitated the ongoing development of a common metrics framework and data platform for four key agencies delivering PLEI in B.C. and has written several background studies on A2J measurement for UVic’s Access to Justice Centre for Excellence.

Alex Peel (she/her) is the Community Engagement Coordinator at Legal Aid BC and is privileged to passionately support LABC’s community partners to connect hard to reach British Columbians to legal aid services and resources. When not working Alex can be found, running, biking, skiing, hiking, doing yoga, or trying to locate her two small and fast-moving children.