D9: Supporting Clients Dealing with Legal Issues: An Introduction to CLEO’s Six Languages Project
Level: Introductory / Intermediate
This session will offer participants an introduction to CLEO’s Six Languages Project, an innovative, multilingual public legal education project. In collaboration with its community partners, CLEO has produced materials on 8 priority legal issues facing newcomers, including sponsoring family members, making a refugee claim, child protection law, worker’s rights, what to do if your child has been charged with a crime and the impact of criminal charges on immigration status. Two new pieces on housing law have recently been added to this collection. Text and audio materials have been produced in Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Somali, Spanish, Tamil and Urdu, as well as English and French.
The workshop facilitator will provide background information on the project and the collaborative process CLEO engaged in to develop the materials. She will then take participants through the resources to provide an introduction to the area of law and the issues covered in the materials as well as other potential referral resources.
The session will also address different ways to make these resources accessible and significant to their clients. Using the resources in a proactive way with individual clients and in networking, outreach and community engagement activities will be presented and analyzed with participants.
Lisa Cirillo is the Legal and Project Coordinator of FLEW (Family Law Education for Women). Prior to joining FLEW, Lisa was a Staff Lawyer at Downtown Legal Services, the University of Toronto’s student legal aid clinic. Lisa has also worked as litigation counsel at ARCH (Advocacy and Resource Centre for Persons with Disabilities) and as counsel to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Lisa is a graduate of the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University. She lives in Parkdale with her spouse and three children and is currently pursuing her LLM, with a focus on family law.
Shankari Balendra is a settlement worker at Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services. Access Alliance works to promote health and well-being and improve access to services for immigrants and refugees in Toronto by addressing medical, social, economic and environmental issues.
