4.0 Methodology
The methodology for this study consisted of three elements:
- A review of literature pertinent to the key research question. Themes of this review are developed in Section 5.1. The bibliography developed as part of the review is in Appendix 1.
- An online scan of clinics in Canada. This was the primary mechanism for developing the matrices of clinics described in Section 5.2.
- Semi-structured telephone or virtual interviews with one or more key respondents in each of the provinces and territories to 1) fill in information gaps about clinics from the online scan; and 2) address the issues in the questionnaire in Appendix 2 of this report. The results of these interviews are reported in Section 5.3.
These methodologies were intended to serve exploratory and descriptive purposes. That is, proceeding from the definition of a legal clinic in Section 3, the methodologies were used to explore how clinic systems are structured and services delivered in each of the 13 jurisdictions. It quickly became evident that although legal clinics exist in all jurisdictions, there is no single model for which findings can be generalized across the country. Even within a given jurisdiction, there are frequently different models of funding and delivery.
The study does not describe clinic outcomes. Clinic data systems – to the extent that they exist – also vary enormously, so at this stage it would not be possible to get even a rudimentary picture of “what works and doesn’t work”. Such a study would require national consensus about outcome measures, and the implementation of measurement systems to follow up with clients to determine those outcomes. This would be a multi-year process and involve considerable expense.
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