Lawyers join health-care team
CHEO partners with legal aid group to help low-income families
‘CHEO’s goal is to better connect care within our walls and beyond our walls to help kids and families be their healthiest.’
ALEX MUNTER
CHEO president and CEO
When a child becomes seriously ill, a parent’s life can freeze in its tracks as every resource of time, energy and money goes into caring for that son or daughter. When those parents also have legal problems — another potentially all-consuming challenge — the results can be disastrous.
To help address that problem, Pro Bono Law Ontario announced Wednesday that it has formed a partnership with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario to help lowincome families resolve those legal problems and allow those parents to focus on their kids.
Those legal issues could relate to employment, family law, immigration, health-care coverage, tax law and beyond.
“CHEO’s goal is to better connect care within our walls and beyond our walls to help kids and families be their healthiest,” said Alex Munter, CHEO’s president and chief executive officer.
The program is the first of a planned series of “Connected Care” initiatives by the hospital to help families tap into other resources in areas that can impact on health, such as housing, poverty and legal issues.
Pro Bono Law Ontario began a similar program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto four years ago, which now helps about 400 families a year. Programs have followed at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, also in Toronto, and the Children’s Hospital in London, Ont.
Law firm Borden Ladner Gervais will be providing the free legal services for the program at CHEO, with other firms potentially joining as needed.
Ottawa lawyer David Scott, cochair of Borden Ladner Gervais, said that to encourage lawyers to do the pro bono work, his firm, like some others, allows approved pro bono work to count as billable hours.
“Once a project is approved, there’s no pain, in terms of advancement for the lawyer for doing it,” Scott said.
“This is important because a lot of the work is done by younger lawyers and otherwise it would be a disincentive.”
Scott, who is on the board of Pro Bono Law Ontario, said the program at Sick Kids showed how great the need is for such legal services.
He said he has no doubt that the CHEO pro bono program will soon be seen as “essential” at the hospital.