Access to Legal Services in Women’s Shelters examines access to legal services among clients of women’s domestic violence shelters. The study samples the views of staff and clients at three domestic violence shelters with the goals of improving understanding of clients’ legal service needs, understanding the challenges clients attempting to access legal services encounter and making recommendations for improvement.

The authors, Alysia Wright, Coordinator of Alberta-based Research Projects at The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family and Lorne Bertrand PhD, Senior Research Associate at The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family conclude that clients’ service needs are complex and often involve legal problems, yet shelters face specific organizational barriers to coordinating legal services. The authors recommend that a further Alberta-wide study be undertaken to examine the legal access patterns of women experiencing domestic violence, to assess the prevalence of the barriers identified in the study and to determine whether further barriers are present in other shelters.

The report is available for download in PDF format from the publications page of The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family website: http://www.crilf.ca/publications.htm.