An educational opportunity for communities to develop a community response and to look at laws, roles and responsibilities.

Project Description

The BC Association of Community Response Networks, is very pleased to have received funding from The Law Foundation of BC for this project. The Legal Remedies project will deliver specific interdisciplinary training for CRN members and those who work with situations of financial abuse or crime. The project will provide necessary legal education and increased relationship opportunities to support more effective and innovative community responses to financial abuse and crime.

This educational and networking opportunity will be offered to CRN members, community and government agencies, designated agency staff, police, lawyers, notaries, financial institutions, and the business community.

Training Plan

Workshops on Legal Remedies for Financial Abuse/Crime against vulnerable adults will be offered in communities throughout BC. Sessions will be delivered over the next two years led by a core group of presenters but will also, as much as possible, include local resource people as presenters. Those people will include Designated Agency and financial institution staff, police, lawyers, CRN Coordinators and Mentors among others.

Expected Impact of the Workshops

• Legal education training for CRN members in as many communities as possible
• More widespread and systematic spreading of financial abuse/crime public legal education information and materials throughout BC pre and post this project
• Better understanding in CRNs of the role of various players and the laws/legal remedies available to each of them to address financial abuse/crime
• Increased membership in CRNs
• Better coordinated community approaches to addressing financial abuse/crime based on stronger and more numerous collaborative relationships between responders
• Increased knowledge of how the laws work and interact in this area may help bring other often coexisting forms of abuse to light and further make the case for prevention being the best alternative for all concerned.

Project Management

Two members of the CRN Mentor’s Team, Kathy Doerksen and Yvonne Kennedy, are managing the project. The Executive Director of the BC CRN Foundation, Sherry Baker is part of the advisory committee that is assisting in preparation and implementation of the project. You will be receiving more information about this project in early 2006.

Kathy Doerksen: kathydoerksen@yahoo.ca
Yvonne Kennedy: ykennedy@shaw.ca