As you may have heard, Jagrup Brar, MLA Surrey Fleetwood, will spend the first month of the new year living on welfare. Having accepted Raise the Rates Coalition’s MLA Welfare Challenge, Brar’s budget for Janurary 2012 will be $610 – the welfare rate set for a single person considered employable. According to Raise the Rates, the goal of the Challenge is to raise public awareness around welfare rates and poverty.

If you are applying for, or are living on welfare, it is important to know your rights and what to expect.

Clicklaw can help you get started by helping with these common questions:

I have to go on welfare. What do I need to know before I apply?

I’m going to the interview for welfare. What do I need to know?  

Also, if you live on a reserve, be sure to get started with:

How is welfare different on and off reserve?

This month provides an opportunity to celebrate and promote awareness about adoption.

Adoption in BC is governed by a provincial law called the Adoption Act. Anyone who lives permanently in BC can apply to adopt, including opposite- and same-sex couples.

There are four different types of adoptions:

• placement by the director of adoption (who works for the Ministry of Children and Family Development),
• placement by an adoption agency,
• direct placement (when the birth parent places a child with a non-relative), and
• relative adoption (adoption by a relative or step-parent).

Want to learn more?

A good place to start is with Clicklaw’s commonly asked questions:

•  We’re thinking about adopting
•  We’re a gay couple thinking about adoption
•  I am a grandparent raising my grandchild. What are my rights and what kind of benefits can I receive?

Are you working with members of the community who might be using the Tenant Survival Guide?

Perhaps you use it yourself?

If so, please take a moment to complete TRAC’s 2-question survey and spread the word to your community.

The Tenant Survival Guide is a plain-language guide that offers tenants a basic understanding of residential tenancy law in BC. It is designed to educate readers on their rights and responsibilities and help prevent or resolve any problems they may encounter during their tenancy.

The Guide is produced by TRAC, a nonprofit organization that provides tenants with legal education and information about residential tenancy law. For more information about how to order a hard copy, click here.

TRAC Executive Director Nicky Dunlop says that TRAC’s survey is designed to determine how people use  this comprehensive guide .

For follow-up information stay tuned to TRAC on Facebook and Twitter. Or, check out TRAC’s website.

Also, for more information about tenancy, rentals, and landlords, take a peek at these great resources on Clicklaw!

During this week of September 26 – 30 the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA) is hosting two exciting Right to Know Week events in Vancouver: a 20-year FIPA anniversary party and fundraiser on the 28^th and an FOI Workshop on the 29th. For details, click here.

 
There are a host of events going on across BC, as well as across Canada. Check out the Right to Know Week Website for more information.

This is the sixth year that Canadians have celebrated Right to Know (RTK) Week. It was created to increase awareness about their right of access to government information, and it highlights the essential role freedom of information plays in democracy and good governance.    

Want to learn more about freedom of information and privacy? Check out these resources on Clicklaw!

Now available on Clicklaw: check out the final conference report recently released by Just a Click Away!

Coordinated by Courthouse Libraries BC, and supported with funding from the Access to Justice Fund (administered by the Law Foundation of Ontario), Just a Click Away, is an initiative to enhance how technology can be used to deliver legal education and information to the public in Canada.

As part of the second stage in the initiative, the Clicklaw public legal education and information (PLEI) portal website was featured in a webinar that explains how it provides access to PLEI to British Columbians. To access the webinars, click here.

The final stage of the initiative was the two-day intensive national conference in Vancouver held this past February. The conference was aimed at those who provide and support public legal education and information, and want to improve how the Internet and emerging technologies can be used to deliver PLEI. The conference featured such themes as best practices for PLEI websites, evaluation of online PLEI, and using social media and web 2.0 technologies.

We’ve recently added dozens of new common questions to Clicklaw on a variety of topics.

There are now over 130 common questions on the Clicklaw site. Each question features resources that are good starting points for information on common legal problems.

Here are a few examples of recently added questions:

• I am a grandparent raising my grandchild. What are my rights and what kind of benefits can I receive?
• How can I protect myself against identity theft?
• I know a family who has just immigrated. What information would help them? 

If you have suggestions for common questions, please  contact us. We’d love to hear from you!

Clicklaw’s HelpMap provides information about legal services in your community. You can search by community, area of law, language, and type of service. There are over 800 locations in BC where you can get legal services. 

The HelpMap is also an excellent tool for service providers who provide referrals to people with legal issues.

For more information on how HelpMap works, have a look at our YouTube video.

If you have suggestions for services to add to our HelpMap, please contact us.

Clicklaw recently launched a new look that makes it easier to find the legal information and help you’re looking for. We asked for your feedback, we listened, and we’ve made changes to improve the site for you.

Information in many languages

You now have easier access to legal information in many languages. On the header of each page, we’ve added quick links to resources and services in Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Punjabi, Korean and Farsi (Persian), as well as a list of all languages available through Clicklaw. Our Clicklaw contributors produce hundreds of resources in many languages – now it’s easier for you to find them.

Keyword search improvements!

Try out the keyword search and we think you’ll notice a big difference – the search is far more flexible, and you’ll be much more satisfied with the search results. You’ll even find that if you make a spelling mistake, our search engine will notice that and offer you alternatives to choose from.

Search results include HelpMap services

When you look for information on Clicklaw, your search results now include some quick suggestions from our HelpMap. Also, the display for the results is cleaner, easier to read, and includes all resources from three sections: Solve Problems, Learn & Teach, and Reform & Research. You can still  narrow down your search using these sections - just use the “Refine your search” box on the left of the search results screen.

We hope that all of these enhancements will make the site more intuitive and easier for you to find the legal information you need.

Comments? We’d love to hear from you! Post a response on our blog, go to our FaceBook page, contact us via Twitter, or send us an email to editor@clicklaw.bc.ca.

Last week, as part of the Just a Click Away initiative, the Clicklaw website and CLEONet were featured in a one-hour webinar hosted by Courthouse Libraries BC. The webinar was part of a series looking at seven different website models being used in regions across Canada (and one from the States) to deliver public legal education and information.

If you didn’t get the chance to participate in the webinar, you can still see what was covered. The webinar recording and supporting materials are now posted on the webinars page on the Just a Click Away project website. Registration is still open for the remaining two webinars, and best of all, they’re free!

The fourth and final episode of Clicklaw Charades is now posted on our YouTube channel.  Please take 37 seconds to have a look, and let us know what you think! Share with your friends, family, coworkers, clients to help us spread the word about the Clicklaw website.

We’re curious – which episode was your favourite and why? Post your answer on:

• our blog,
• YouTube,
• Facebook, or
• Twitter (#clicklaw).

Or you can always contact us at editor@clicklaw.bc.ca.