Decolonizing family law through trauma-informed practices
Witten by Myrna McCallum and Haley Hrymak
This project was conducted between May 2020 and March 2021 and was made possible by generous funding from the Law Foundation of BC.
This research builds on Rise Women’s Legal Centre’s earlier work concerning the legal system’s response to survivors’ experiences of family violence. In a report titled Why Can’t Everyone Just Get Along? How BC’s Family Law System Puts Survivors in Danger, Rise highlighted how the legal system’s response to survivors of family violence frequently exacerbated the risks women faced instead of enhancing their safety.
This report has discusses some of the ways in which BC’s family law system is failing to meet the needs of Indigenous parents. A failure to understand or make space for Indigenous concepts relating to the best interests of children and families can also result in decisions that impair the ability of Indigenous communities to maintain important connections. For all these reasons and more, we need to consider ways to decolonize the family law system.
Read full report here.