The Janusz Korczak Association of Canada and Access to Justice BC (A2JBC) – a network of justice sector leaders chaired by the Chief Justice of BC, Robert Bauman – are co-hosting an online dialogue on taking an inter-sectoral approach to the family justice system.
More than 100 thought leaders and influencers from different sectors, and “experts” (including adults and young people with lived experience), have come together for six online sessions. Knowledgeable speakers set the stage for small groups to exchange thoughts on challenging questions, all related to taking an inter-sectoral approach to family justice.
This dialogue is a unique opportunity to reflect on why and how to transcend the silos we work in and promote, across sectors, the human rights of children and youth. It is part of a larger cross-sectoral Transform the Family Justice System (TFJS) initiative, led by A2JBC, that seeks to put children, youth and families (not courts) at the centre of the family justice system by focusing on achieving family well-being. This holistic vision is consistent with the approach of Janusz Korczak and leads naturally to taking an inter-sectoral approach to policy and action.
Session 1 on Oct 19, 2021 set the tone by hearing from young people with lived experience of the family justice system, and provided the context for the dialogue including a presentation on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Subsequent sessions address the following questions:
Session 2 Nov 30, 2021: Why does Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs) and Resilience research lead us to an inter-sectoral approach to the family justice system and what does it tell us about how to do it? (presenter Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl)
Session 3 Jan 11, 2022: What can we learn from holistic Indigenous approaches to family justice issues? (presenter Dr. Sarah Morales)
Session 4 Mar 1, 2022: When have inter-sectoral initiatives worked and what can we learn from these successes? Presenters: Nancy Cameron, QC on collaborative practice; Dr. Christine Loock on Responsive Inter-sectoral Children’s Health, Education, and Research, RICHER; Zulie Sachedina on the Ishmaili experience)
Session 5 Apr 5, 2022: What are the constraints to taking an inter-sectoral approach and how can they be lessened? (presenter Lori Wanamaker, Deputy to the Premier)
Session 6 May 24, 2022. What are we learning about the optimum role for the justice system in achieving child and family well-being?
Welcome Remarks Delivered at the Intersectoral Family Justice Dialogue
The Honourable Robert J. Bauman – Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Introduction
Thank you to the Elder for offering a prayer to assist us in our deliberations. Welcome to the many esteemed guests and participants today.
Land Acknowledgment
Before we start, I want to acknowledge that we are meeting on various Indigenous traditional territories throughout BC, Canada and the U.S. I myself am speaking today from the traditional lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Acknowledging the historic and continuing presence of Indigenous people on these lands is significant to our work today. The family justice system, and the justice system broadly, is a colonial justice system that we know has perpetuated harms against Indigenous families—from the residential school system’s intergenerational impact on Indigenous children, families and communities, to the current disproportionate number of Indigenous children in care as we speak.
Importance of the Day’s Event
The family justice system evolved out of the English common law system. It came from a context where children’s voices had little to no value; children were to be seen, not heard; and the notion of “family law” was closely connected with the concepts of property law.
Of course, the family justice system has evolved over time, and it has been recognized that the focus must be “the best interests of the child”. However—despite the promise of looking after children’s best interests—the justice system has unintentionally produced harm. The family justice system, rather than supporting the well-being of children, has left children feeling unheard and has exacerbated their stress and anxiety.
Access to Justice BC aims for a radically different approach. Children—the well-being of children and of their families—should be at the centre of all we are doing in the justice system, and actually in all of our “systems” and “sectors”.
That brings us to our gathering today. The purpose of this dialogue series, of which today is the inaugural session, is to bring these various systems and sectors together for dialogue and, ultimately, for action and meaningful change.
A year ago, Access to Justice BC committed to develop and lead a cross-sectoral Transform the Family Justice System (TFJS) collaborative. This dialogue process is an important step along this road.
I’m very pleased to say that just this past weekend, another important step was taken. The Benchers of the Law Society approved 11 recommendations aimed at reducing stress and trauma, while increasing access to non-adversarial family law processes. They agreed to join the TFJS Collaborative and to support a multidisciplinary approach to helping families resolve family disputes.
Thank you
I would like to offer thanks to the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada and its President Jerry Nussbaum for stepping up to co-host this dialogue process and, in particular, for making it possible to engage facilitator Amanda Fenton, who has worked with A2JBC in the past to help us understand our unique role.
Thanks to everyone present today, willing to take the time to consider what we can accomplish together. Here’s to a productive dialogue.
Jerry Nussbaum, The Janusz Korczak Association of Canada – Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Sincere thanks to the Chief Justice Robert Bauman for his kind words. I would also like to thank the organizing group (Jane Morley, Ron Friesen, Anton Grunfeld, Amanda Fenton) for their vision and for making it a reality and the Process Advisory Committee, who are too numerous to name individually but whose work was invaluable in advising the organizing group both at a meeting in June and individually providing guidance.
I am delighted to welcome you to the inaugural session of the Access to justice and JKAC initiative.
The purpose of this initiative is to create a platform for dialog and discussion, to create a space where participants have an opportunity to contribute and have a meaningful conversation and a creative dialog about difficult issues covering a large area related to access to justice, creating a fair justice system, one that is fair for young people, and fair for families. And in a very broad sense, to contribute to the creation of a holistic approach to family well-being.
So where does the Janusz Korczak Association fit into this conversation – why are we co-sponsors of this initiative? To make this clear, I want to share with you a little bit about Dr. Janusz Korczak, a pioneer of children’s rights, whose legacy our association seeks to honor and bring to bear to tackle issues of children’s rights in the 21st century. His legacy is deeply intertwined with the place of children in the justice system and his holistic approach is one that we hope to emulate here today.
Dr. Korczak was one of the moral heroes of the 20th century, a pioneer in child advocacy and a world-wide symbol of commitment to the welfare of children and youth.
He was the living embodiment of a holistic approach: he was at once a pediatrician, researcher, author, and a broadcaster; he was a trailblazer in the field of children’s rights. His writings form the basis of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Notably for us, for decades he was also an orphanage director, where he put his revolutionary pedagogical philosophy into practice. His orphanage, to which he dedicated 30 years of his life, offered a democratic society for children and youth, with its own parliament and court, and its own newspaper, a place for children to freely express their views. Although the Children’s Republic that he nurtured at his orphanages perished with him and his children at the hands of the Nazis in 1942, I want to share with you, briefly, some examples of how justice was understood and administered and what lessons we can take from those examples.
Court of Peers
In the courts, adults would supervise, but all the decision making was left in the hands of the children who would seek to solve disputes and resolve conflicts, practicing their own form of restorative justice. They followed a codex of laws that excluded corporal punishment and instead of seeking to punish violators it aimed to help them improve. As Korczak himself explained, “You do something wrong, try to do better. It is high time to end the practice of despotism toward children.”
Engaging children in the legislative process helped them become familiar with the law, and to learn to reason and respect the law.
Parliament
The parliament was the other most important and crucial expression of children’s self-governance at the orphanage. The hundred residents would vote to elect 20 representatives who formed the parliament. The parliament would review and approve or reject Korczak’s ideas and suggestions as well as the rules for the orphanage.
Legendary child psychologist Jean Piaget, following his visit to the orphanage, described Korczak this way:
“the director of the orphanage is an extraordinary human being, courageous enough to trust children to the degree that he literally gave them the right to solve even the most complicated matters of discipline and set for them the most responsible tasks.”
The rules at the Children’s Republic were set by the children and for the children. There was no domination, no discrimination. Where our current system, even if we grant that it is well-meaning, imposes judgment on children, Korczak believed in their full participation. Although he was a father figure to hundreds, he was not paternalistic but empowered children and believed in respecting the child as a foundational principle.
Dr. Korczak approached children with respect and love, dignity and equality. Dr. Korczak’s goal was to engage the children in a dialog, finding a common language with children, understanding how children experience adults, and on the other hand, to comprehend adults views of children. Korczak possessed a unique gift of seeing the world from the child’s perspective.
Dr. Korczak’s ground-breaking philosophy of children’s rights had at its core the values of democracy and community, both in principle and in practice. Korczak considered children as partners, equal to adults as human beings. He insisted that there could be no human rights without children’s rights.
Korczak placed respect for the child at the heart of his vision and sought to empower children and give them a voice in their own fate in a way that can serve as a beacon that can guide us toward what is possible. Dr Korczak’s legacy, I hope you will agree, has never been more relevant than it is today.
We can learn from his legacy a child-focused approach that considers legal problems faced by children from their own perspective and addressing children’s best interests by taking that perspective seriously.
JKAC strives for the dissemination of knowledge about Dr. Korczak’s work and ideas in order to better integrate it into contemporary legal, social and pedagogical theories and practices, and to make it the basis for cooperation among educators, child welfare workers, researchers, physicians, lawyers and children’s rights activists. I hope that today, in this setting, Dr Korczak’s legacy shines through and lives both in the background of our conversations, and is also interwoven into them. Korczak’s philosophy is fundamentally holistic, and that too is something that we hope to emulate here, bringing together people who think about and work with children and families in a variety of fields and settings. Because we are dealing with a challenge that cannot be met with any single approach, we hope to honor and further Dr Korczak’s legacy with the inter-sectoral conversation we are kicking off here today.