Our Vision
Communication Access to Justice (CAJust) believes that people who have disabilities affecting their communication have a right to equality in Canadian law. Our mission is to promote access to the justice system for victims, witnesses, and accused persons who have speech, language, communication, and/or cognitive disabilities, when communicating in police, legal, corrections, and/or justice situations.
With this in mind, our core objectives are:
To provide training, resources, and guidelines for Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) to work as communication intermediaries when supporting victims, witnesses and accused persons communicating in police, legal and justice settings
To create a community of practice for communication intermediaries to share and learn from each other.
To maintain and expand a national database of trained communication intermediaries that can be used to source communication intermediary services.
To facilitate the development of regional communication intermediary hubs to support the justice system in providing communication support to victims, witnesses and accused persons who have communication disabilities.
To increase awareness of communication intermediary services for individuals who have communication disabilities, their family members, and disability services
To support police, legal, and justice professionals in recognizing people who have communication disabilities, and how and when to engage communication intermediary services.
To work with the justice system, accessibility legislators and policy makers to embed communication intermediary services as an essential accommodation service for victims, witnesses and accused person who have communication disabilities.
For more information about CAJust and its work, please reach out to Executive Director, Caitlin Buchel at caitlinbuchel@cajust.ca.