Fall family law conference to bring in non-legal perspectives

Law360 Canada (September 30, 2024, 2:44 PM EDT) -- An upcoming conference in Manitoba will draw on expertise from outside the legal sector in exploring ways to improve the public’s interactions with the family law system, says an organizer.

The Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice’s (CIAJ) 48th annual conference, Families and the Law, will be held this year in downtown Winnipeg from Oct. 9 to 11.  

“How [this is] different … from your typical legal conference is that we’re trying to look at different perspectives from outside of the legal system — the health-care system; education; social work — and not just from the lawyers’ or the judiciary’s perspective,” CIAJ executive director Christine O’Doherty told Law360 Canada. “How do we best help [families] understand what is going on? And how can the justice system best help families navigate, or help them resolve their disputes?”

According to the event’s program, the conference “will consider the wide ambit of concerns regarding the system’s ability to aid families in resolving their disputes.”

One speaker will be Nicole Sherren, head of Calgary-based R2P Solutions. Sherren will host Harnessing Brain Science to Re-Imagine the Family Justice System, a session about mental health and how adverse childhood experiences impact people — professionally and personally — later in life.

According to information from CIAJ, Sherren has a PhD in neuroscience and is an expert in “operationalizing the science of early brain development.”

There are hopes the session will yield solutions around mitigating the impact family law proceedings have on kids, says O’Doherty.

“We know what it is doing to children, but then we have this system where children witness parents fighting in court, or parents fighting over custody when the child is in the courthouse. … Bringing this science, this evidence-based information, we hope it will … open up some potential solutions outside of the legal system.”

Prominent social work expert Rachel Birnbaum will be participating in Understanding High-Conflict Families and Paths to Resolution, a session examining the challenges high-conflict situations present to family courts.

The program states that it will explore whether “current administrative practices exacerbate existing problems,” and if “adversarial legal systems enable high-conflict family disputes.”

According to a bio page from Western University’s King’s School of Social Work, Birnbaum has spent more than 20 years working with children and families involved in separation and divorce, with a focus on high-conflict situations.

Another session, Unveiling the Layers: Understanding and Addressing Intimate Partner Violence, will discuss the need for courts and lawyers to better understand the psychological, social and legal characteristics of intimate partner violence (IPV).

O’Doherty said the IPV issue must be looked at “from a multidisciplinary perspective.” The session’s speakers, she said, will explore myths surrounding IPV — that there is a reluctance to report violence due to a fear of engaging with the court system, for example.

“Again, the legal actors cannot be the only ones looking at that, and we … need to look at these problems because they are systemic problems, so we need to bring in other people other than lawyers and judges. We need to bring in health care, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and look at the impacts [of IPV].”

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