Making Use of the Specialized Courts – DTC, MHC, YMHC, IPC

Kim Hyslop, Gavin Johnston, Lauren Konarowski, and Elizabeth Warren review the specialized courts available in Ottawa: Drug Treatment Court, Mental Health Court, Youth Mental Health Court, and Indigenous Peoples’ Court, including the specific measures that courts take to ensure that clients living with mental health and/or substance use issues and/or who are Indigenous do not feel alienated by the court. 

The speakers discuss effective strategies for interviewing your client to determine whether a specialty court is right for the client, including managing your client’s expectations of what can be achieved in the court and what your client will be expected to do. The panelists also discuss strategies for dealing with difficult clients in the specific context of specialty courts. They cover counsel’s duties related to advocacy, particularly that counsel’s role is not to do what is in the client’s best interest or to “fix” the client, but rather to follow the client’s instructions. Given the clientele that use the specialty courts, the panel also discusses the importance of language and terminology that counsel use when communicating with clients living with mental health and/or drug use issues and with clients who are Indigenous. The panelists discuss strategies for interviewing clients to avoid retraumatizing the client when discussing difficult and challenging aspects of the client’s history.