LSS services update — News from Public Legal Information and Applications

The Public Legal Information and Applications Division manages legal aid applications and develops and provides public legal education and information (PLEI) to communities around BC.

Local agents

As noted in the previous ELAN, in April 2010, the Legal Services Society (LSS) will replace regional centres in five communities — Victoria, Surrey, Prince George, Kelowna, and Kamloops — with seven local agents located in Victoria, Surrey North, Cloverdale/Langley, New Westminster, Prince George, Kelowna, and Kamloops. While LSS is ending its participation in the Nanaimo Justice Access Centre as of March 2010, the Nanaimo local agent will continue to provide intake services — including family intake previously handled by the Nanaimo Justice Access Centre — and other PLEI services. For more information about the new local agents, see Local agent opportunities or the recently posted Local agent Expressions of Interest FAQs on the LSS website. We expect to complete the selection process in February 2010 and will update community agencies soon thereafter.

Public legal education and information (PLEI)

This year, our top priority is to help people with low incomes who have criminal, family, child protection, or immigration and related problems, and to continue supporting Aboriginal services. To advance these goals, we are organizing several one-day workshops for intermediaries in communities around the province in the coming months. The workshops will focus on family law, child protection, First Nations Court, and Aboriginal (Gladue) sentencing issues. The "one-day workshop" format is more cost-effective and allows us to visit more rural and remote communities and reach more community workers. In December, a successful one-day workshop was held in Nelson, which included our first video conference with a speaker from a remote location.

Services and staffing

We are restructuring staffing to reflect current needs. Our support for community outreach, core LSS publications, and education services will continue beyond March 2010, and we are developing new staff positions to address these needs. Although our fieldworker positions are eliminated as of March 2010, we hope to hire staff into new positions in the spring.

We have filled three legal information outreach worker (LIOW) positions on a permanent basis. This will see the introduction of LIOW services at the Downtown Community Court in Vancouver; the continuation of LIOW information services as part of our toll-free provincial Call Centre; and the continuation of other information outreach activities in the Lower Mainland.

The early end of LSS’ participation in the Nanaimo Justice Access Centre and closure of the regional centres means that a number of LIOW term positions around BC will end. This is something we will consider as we develop a plan for expanded community engagement.

We will liaise with key intermediaries in the course of our planning, but if you have information about your communities' PLEI needs, we welcome your input: please e-mail us your suggestions. We expect to enhance our PLEI work and improve our services to remote and Aboriginal communities as a result. See our local agent Guidelines for Submitting an Expression of Interest (PDF), for an outline of the basic PLEI services to be provided by local agents.