Volume 24, Number 1, 2008
Articles
- Court-Ordered Assessments in Ontario Child Welfare Cases: Review and Recommendations for Reform - Nicholas Bala and Alan Leschied
Court-ordered assessments by independent mental health professionals play an important role in the resolution of child welfare cases. There are, however, significant concerns about their use, including: the delay that may result from an assessment; a shortage of qualified assessors; and lack of supervision and standards in the assessment field. This paper is based on an unpublished Report prepared with government support that reviewed literature and jurisprudence on forensic child welfare assessments and surveyed Ontario judges, lawyers, social workers, and assessors on their experiences and concerns with these assessments. The Report made recommendations for short-term changes in regulations and practice in Ontario, and the paper discusses the government response to these recommendations. This paper also considers recommendations in the Report for the establishment of an agency with a province-wide mandate for forensic child welfare assessments, to address such systemic issues as the shortage of qualified assessors, the absence of standards, and the lack of effective monitoring.
- Franchir les limites de la salle de classe: une expérience de droit comparé en droit de la famille - Barbara Atwood, Graciela Jasa Silveira, Nicole LaViolette, et Tom Oldham
Case Comment
- Regulating the Queer Family: The Assisted Human Reproduction Act - Angela Cameron
Book Review
- Fathers' Rights Activism and Law Reform in Comparative Perspective edited by Richard Collier and Sally Sheldon - Mary Jane Mossman