Rise Women’s Legal Centre is looking for women who are willing to share their family court psychological reports for our research project. Our project is partnered with the Centre for Response-Based Practice to identify ways to improve the response of family law lawyers and advocates to women who have experienced violence. We will keep all personal information confidential. We are willing to interview any women who are providing reports if they feel that a supplementary interview is helpful to understanding the report.
The psychological reports that we are looking for are prepared for use in family law cases, and are sometimes called “section 211 reports” or “views and needs of the child reports”. These reports can be prepared by a family justice counsellor or a social worker but are frequently prepared by a private psychologist. For the purposes of this project, we are looking for reports that were ordered by the court in March 2013 or later, and that were entered into court as evidence.
The reports will be analyzed by Linda Coates PhD from the Centre for Response-Based Practice. Linda is a professor in the department of Psychology at Okanagan College and focuses her work on the connection between violence and language.
Please help us spread the word! This is a unique opportunity to identify systemic concerns arising from the way in which psychological reports are conducted, and we hope that the results of this study will help us to educate our students and clients, as well as advocates, lawyers and judges. We would appreciate your help in passing this information on to anyone who may be interested in participating. Please contact research@womenslegalcentre.ca with any questions.
Sincerely,
Haley Hrymak
Legal Researcher/Project Coordinator
Rise Women's Legal Centre