Finding the Best Ways Forward: Report on the Symposium on Children's Participation in Justice Processes.

• Author: Boyd, John-Paul

In mid-September 2017, the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family and the Alberta Office of the Child and Youth Advocate ("OCYA") hosted an innovative two-day national symposium on children's participation in justice processes in Calgary, Alberta. The symposium brought together leading stakeholders from across Canada, including judges and lawyers, mental health professionals, and government justice employees to talk about how children and youth are heard, how their interests are protected and how their evidence is received in justice processes. The symposium was intended to generate innovative proposals for policy reform, best practices, and recommendations for future research about children's participation in justice processes.

The symposium included important plenary presentations by keynote speakers Sheldon Kennedy, the lead director of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre, and Dr. Nicole Sherren, the scientific director and senior program officers of the Palix Foundation, as well as Del Graff, the Alberta Child and Youth Advocate, the OCYA's youth panel and the Honourable Kathleen Ganley, Alberta Minister of Justice and Solicitor General. Those leading the workshops that made up the core of the symposium included Professor Nick Bala, Dr. Rachel Birnbaum, the Honourable Donna Martin QC, Dr. Francine Cyr, Patricia Hebert QC, Dr. Stephen Carter, the Honorable Justice Gillian Marriott, Dale Hensley QC and many others, all highly-regarded professionals.

The workshops held at the symposium covered a broad range of topics on the theme of children's participation in justice processes, including:

* Best practices for representing youth in conflict with the law;

* Judicial interviews with children;

* Child participation in mediation and parenting coordination;

* Hearing the voices of infants and toddlers;

* The limits, if any, of children's participation in justice processes;

* The privacy rights of children and youth;

* Assessing the competence and credibility of children; and

* Hearing the voice of the alienated child.

The presence of so many people involved in one way or another with the family justice system gave the Institute a unique opportunity to sample the views of attendees on children's participation in justice processes, and an electronic survey on these issues was completed by 102 participants.

To give a sense of those completing the survey, about four-fifths our respondents were women (81.2%), and most said they...