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Clinic transformation

About legal clinics

Community legal clinics are non-profit legal centres. They are governed by an independent board of directors who are representative of the community they serve.

Clinics employ lawyers, legal workers, paralegals and other staff to provide information, legal advice and representation. Clinics deliver services within a specific geographic area or community, and work at a grass-roots level to help people in their area

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Social Innovation to Enhance Access to Justice for Client with Mental Health & Addictions

Last modified: August 11, 2014

A presentation at the Annual Addictions & Mental Health Conference, Toronto, May 26 2014

Innovation often starts at the local level, with the direct service provider identifying a gap or barrier in service and then sets about finding a creative way to address the issue.  In Halton Region, Halton Community Legal Services’ Executive Director Colleen Sym did just that.

She and her staff were acutely aware that their clients, particularly from vulnerable populations, often found their way to the clinic in the eleventh hour where there was little the clinic could do to assist, often because there was no time left to engage in the legal process.  In response, Colleen applied for project funding through Legal Aid Ontario’s (LAO’s) Innovations Fund to explore the development of a Legal Health Checklist that would assist clients and other service providers in identifying legal issues before they become a crisis, asking questions about their everyday problems.

The objective is to identify the issues early and connect the clients to the appropriate social service supports in hopes of avoiding a legal crisis down the road.   The tool is being piloted at the local level.

LAO is interested in exploring upstream, holistic, and integrated service delivery models.  LAO is identifying promising practices and working with clinics to support transformation at the local, regional, and provincial level.

LAO is identifying promising practices, evaluating funding applications and working with clinics to support transformation at the local, regional, and provincial level.

The Halton initiative has significant potential to strengthen the triage, referral, and ongoing capacities of clinics. LAO has funded the Halton project to expand their initiative.  This project involves developing a mobile device platform for the checklist that can be used by other clinics in the southwest region.

Jayne Mallin, Senior Counsel, Clinic Transformation, looks at some transformation initiatives through a social innovation framework which allows LAO to look at an innovation that has been tried and scale it up through a rigorous prototyping, testing, and evaluation of the model Expanding local successes is a great way to strengthen the capacity of legal clinics across the province.

LAO is in the process of developing its’ Mental Health Strategy. When Policy Counsel, Ryan Fritsch, heard about the Legal Health Checklist while he was out in the community consulting with stakeholders engaged with people with mental health issues, he was intrigued.

The Legal Health Checklist could assist LAO across other service areas. The checklist was of particular interest because of the upstream model and emphasis on partnerships in the community.  Innovative service delivery models are important. With legal professionals acknowledging the need for broader networks working together, there can be broader support for vulnerable populations such as those living with mental illness.

The three lawyers, presented their thoughts to the Ontario Mental Health and Addictions conference in May, where they illustrated the benefits of a local innovation scaling up to build capacity for a network of clinics, and then scaling up across the broader legal aid system.

Links to Prezi presentations: