Unified Family Court, Summative Evaluation

7. Conclusions And Lessons Learned

This section of the report presents the conclusions of the findings presented in the preceding sections and outlines recommendations for further research based on the lessons learned during the current evaluation.

7.1. Conclusions

The goals and objectives of the Unified Family Court model are aligned with federal priorities.

Responsibility for family law and the family justice system is shared between the federal and provincial/territorial governments. Implementation of the UFC model has thus been a collaborative exercise reflective of the goals and objectives of both levels of government.

Conceptually, the goals and objectives of the UFC model align well with federal and provincial/territorial priorities for family justice. However, the UFC concept may not be fully implemented at individual sites. Therefore, operationally, the UFC may not fully align with federal and provincial/territorial priorities.

The complex and changing needs of families experiencing separation or divorce continue to be served by the Unified Family Court model.

The increasing complexity of family law matters in the 1970s was a key impetus behind the development of the UFC conceptual model. Recent publications and findings from this evaluation suggest that Canadian families have undergone significant changes over the past several decades, adding to this complexity.

The unification of jurisdiction over family law in a single court was meant to make the system easier for families to navigate, a characteristic that aligns well with serving a population that faces many challenges such as language and cultural barriers. A specialized bench can also help to address issues that are related to cultural differences, as well as the increasing complexity of family structure and conjugal histories. FJS were to provide a range of services to help people address and resolve issues through means outside the court. These services also provide support mechanisms that can be developed to address specific community needs.

Judicial and court staff required additional time to educate or guide self-represented parties through the various procedures required to initiate and continue a case. Well-developed FLIC services that are supported through the UFC model can be an important resource for parties that are self-represented. Some jurisdictions have developed services and programs specifically designed for SRL (for example, the SRL Project in Nova Scotia).

Overall, UFCs enable better access to a specialized bench of judges, on-site dispute resolution and FJS than non-Unified Family Court sites.

The evaluation findings demonstrated that UFCs enable better access to both the specialized bench and out-of-court services. While some out-of-court dispute resolution and FJS are also available at traditional court sites, the overall range and accessibility to these services were greater at UFC sites. While it was somewhat challenging to quantify reliably the extent to which some non-UFC sites might offer access to specialized judges, it appears that UFCs consistently rely on experienced, specialized judges resulting in a network of expertise in family law matters that is not available at traditional court sites. Access to a specialized bench was viewed as one of the key criteria of the UFC with respect to meeting the UFCs' stated objectives.

Although some of the results are inconclusive due to design issues, there is some evidence to suggest that the Unified Family Court model helps to resolve issues more efficiently.

Taken in aggregate, some of the results do not show there were any differences in the outcomes associated with the UFC model and with a more traditional non-UFC model. However, there was some evidence to suggest that the UFCs operate more efficiently in terms of use of judicial resources/court time. Specifically, the total number of activities per case to resolve issues was lower in the UFC group than in the non-UFC comparison group.

Furthermore, it appears that where the UFC closely resembles the intended model (i.e., includes all of the key elements identified in the conceptual model), there is evidence that the UFC model performs better than the more non-UFC sites. This was true for indicators such as time to resolution, less adversarial resolution of cases and decreased intensity of court utilization. The results suggest that a formal intake mechanism might be a key contributor to better performance of the model with respect to indicators such as less adversarial resolution of issues (more consent orders within a case, fewer trials), a more timely resolution of cases and decreased intensity of court usage as well as fewer repeat applications when compared to the same performance indicators at non-UFC locations. It may be that the presence or absence of formal intake/referral services can affect performance. This is an area that could be explored through further research.

Simply providing a specialized bench, out-of-court dispute resolution and FJS does not guarantee their accessibility or utilization.

Utilization of FJS was found to be affected by the presence of or absence of a strong referral mechanism, such as intake personnel. Individual preference of justice system personnel can also affect utilization of these services. Specifically, in the location where intake was the point of entry and mandatory for all parties, outcomes revealed high levels of consent, few court activities and shorter time to resolution. Where intake has been implemented as part of the process (i.e., mandatory intake), the service becomes the main point of entry.

7.2. Lessons Learned and Recommendations for Further Research

Assessing the impact of the UFCs against a more traditional model is challenging with respect to research design and implementation.

Evaluation design in an historic perspective is always challenging, but in the current case, historic developments across all court sites combined with a set of other challenges, exaggerated the difficulties in assessing the impact of an initiative that was launched over 30 years ago. Since then, there have been various initiatives by the federal and provincial governments designed to change and improve family law and the approach to resolution in family law in Canada.

Many of the elements identified in the UFC conceptual model can be (and have been) implemented without unifying the jurisdiction of the superior and provincial courts. As a result, it is difficult to assess the impact of the UFC via a quasi-experimental design to assess the difference between the UFC group and a comparison group. As outlined in the evaluation design, it was necessary to select the sites based on specific criteria to ensure that the UFCs selected for the evaluation would resemble the UFC model as much as possible, whereas the control group needed to be as different from the UFC model as possible. Throughout the evaluation, it became increasingly apparent that traditional courts in Canada have, though various initiatives over time, adopted some of the approaches and provide some of the services that were initially only found at the UFC. In addition, site selection issues resulted in a scenario where the selected UFC sites did not all resemble the UFC model as closely as possible. Both aspects combined, along with the challenges associated with intervening variables discussed above, created a situation where aggregate results were of limited value and often did not yield any meaningful findings. The site descriptions provide evidence for successes of some of the individual UFCs when compared to the traditional courts. Conclusions at the aggregate level with respect to the performance of the UFC model compared to non-UFC courts could only be drawn for some of the performance indicators, such as access to a specialized bench and the various out-of-court services.

Client surveys associated with justice programs and that span across different jurisdictions require substantial planning prior to implementing an evaluation.

Key challenges of a survey approach to getting the clients' perspectives are concerns over confidentiality and accessing contact information. These considerations were taken into account when designing the current evaluation, where a file review was deemed more feasible than a survey. However, it is recommended that options be explored to conduct a survey to complement the information collected and presented in the current report. For example, options for a survey could include a general population survey that does not rely on contact information from court files to contact court clients.

Timely resolution of issues is a problematic indicator that is influenced by a range of intervening factors that could not be sufficiently controlled for in the analysis.

It is possible that time to resolution might not be a reliable indicator with respect to measuring the performance of the UFCs or other justice initiatives, for that matter. Time measures in research involving cases that proceed through the justice system (i.e., court and out-of-court services) are problematic for various reasons. One difficulty associated with this indicator is that it can be interpreted many different ways and is generally poorly defined or logically linked with all activities in the program theory. For example, more timely resolution could refer to the actual time parties spend in court with a judge - a measure that is not tracked in the majority of court files - or it could refer to time to resolution measured in days between the initial application and the final resolution of a case. In addition, timely resolution of cases could also be interpreted as the extent to which the parties to a case feel that the amount of time taken to resolve issues was appropriate for them. Overall, the assumption that cases at UFCs can be resolved in a more timely manner and that this can be measured needs to be revisited in future attempts to assess the impacts on court performance.

The complete disconnect between case files maintained by family justice service providers and the court registry files makes it very difficult to identify how parties proceed through the family justice system.

A number of performance indicators could not be measured due to the inability to identify utilization of FJS or out-of-court dispute resolution activities through the court file review. Similarly, if family justice files had been reviewed, it would have been very difficult to cross-reference these files with court registry files in order to determine court usage patterns.

Case management/filing methods that permit the tracking of parties through the family justice system, in its entirety, would be important to similar evaluations or other research related to the family justice system.