Belleville COY Symposium
- Belleville COY Symposium
- Monday April 1 2019 09:00 to 16:00
- Alumni Hall
- Loyalist College, 376 Wallbridge Loyalist Rd, Belleville ON, K8N 5B9
About this Event
The COY Ryerson Project was created to find ways to address the systemic barriers facing CAS youth who cross-over into the youth criminal justice system in Ontario in order to reduce the criminalization of CAS youth. The COY Belleville Pilot Project has been working locally for the past several years to address these systemic barriers and to work toward better outcomes for these vulnerable youth.
The COY Symposium is an opportunity for the COY Project to share local and provincial findings, outcomes & lessons learned with students, youth, professionals, and academics who strive to make a difference in the lives of at-risk youth.
Symposium Presentation Topics
Morning
- Cross-Over Youth Issues: A Provincial Perspective
- Ryerson Network Analysis Research about Belleville Cross-Over Youth: Initial Findings
- Best Practice Resources to Better Support Cross Over Youth
Afternoon
- Belleville Cross-Over Youth Steering Committee: Model for Success
- Cross-Over Youth Voices; When There's Youth, There's a Way
- Court 101: Navigating the Court System for COY Youth
- Snapshot of COY Youth in Belleville & Picton Youth Courts
- Moving Forward: Expanding Youth Engagement in Youth Justice, Child Welfare, Education & Residential Systems
About the Registration
- This Symposium is free to attend
- Must register in advance to attend Symposium. Please click on the green "Register" button and provide your information
- Complimentary refreshments and lunch is included
- Free parking in designated area on Loyalist College campus
- CPD accreditation pending
For all inquires please email reception@johnhowardbelleville.ca or
call Emilee Lawson, Symposium Registration Coordinator, 613-968-6629
Symposium Speakers
Dr. Judy Finlay
Project Co-Chair, Academic Lead and Co-Founder
Dr. Judy Finlay is presently an Associate Professor at Ryerson University. She is currently the Principal Investigator and Co-chair of the Cross over Youth Project, which is funded by the Department of Justice, Canada. The Project team intervenes in ways to interrupt the trajectory of youth in child welfare care from entering the youth justice system. Project sites include Toronto, Belleville, Thunder Bay, Peterborough, Brantford and Brampton.
Dr. Finlay is also presently a member of the Child and Family Services Review Board with the Social Justice Tribunal of Ontario.
Judy Finlay was the longest standing Child Advocate in Canada and was Ontario’s Child and Youth Advocate from 1991-2007. Judy has worked for more than three decades in the areas of child welfare and children's mental health. Judy has participated in the development of children’s rights agendas, youth capacity building and leadership and community development in Mexico, Jamaica, Japan, Guatemala and Sierra Leone.
Dr. Judy Finlay has built a career of activism, research, creative practices, and collaborations that defy traditional partnerships. She has generated knowledge about and more importantly knowledge with marginalized youth, Indigenous leaders, academics and scholars, politicians and civil servants, artists and performers, locally, provincially, nationally and globally. She sees her role as creating change, in disrupting processes of long-standing marginalization and oppression and in constructing new ideas operationalized through research, policy and practice.
Judy Finlay’s other research includes: Mamow Ki-ken-da-ma-win: Searching Together: Enhancing the determinates of health through a partnership-based approach to child, family and community wellness in First Nations in remote northern Ontario.
Matthew Eaton-Kent
COY Ryerson Project Resource Coordinator
Matthew is a J.D. graduate of Queen’s University. He also earned a Bachelor of Science from the London School of Economics (U.K.). He has his own criminal defence practice, Eaton-Kent Law, along side the work he is doing with the Crossover Youth Project. Matthew previously worked in the Immediate Office of the Prosecutor at the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Dr. Julian Hasford
Lead Researcher Ryerson Network Analysis Project
Dr. Julian Hasford is an Assistant Professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at Ryerson University, whose research and activism focuses on issues of African Canadian empowerment, anti-racism, systems change, and community-based prevention. He holds a Ph.D. in Community Psychology from Wilfrid Laurier University, and a M.HSc. in Health Promotion from the University of Toronto. He maintains an active program of research in child welfare, which includes needs assessments of African Canadians involved in the child welfare system, and evaluations of the Cross-Over Youth Project (a systems change initiative for youth dually involved in child welfare and youth justice systems) in various communities.
Dr. Hasford has extensive professional experience in residential and community-based youth work, including over eight years as a frontline worker in group home and foster care settings, and over 12 years as a Community Recreation Programmer with the City of Toronto’s Community Gardens and Urban Farms Program, where he was involved in engaging racialized youth in urban agriculture. Over the last several years, he has also been involved in anti-racist advocacy through work with organizations such as the Black Community Action Network of Peel, Tabono Institute, and the Ontario Association for Children’s Aid Society (One Vision, One Voice project).
Dr. Arla Good
Researcher, Ryerson Network Analysis Project
Dr. Arla Good is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Psychology Department at Ryerson University. She holds a Ph.D in Psychological Science. Arla’s research broadly focuses on developing strategies to support community building and positive social relations, and she has extensive experience developing and evaluating community-based social programs. She has been part of the Crossover Youth Project evaluation team since 2017 and is evaluating the Toronto and Belleville sites of the project.
Juanita Stephen
Researcher, Ryerson Network Analysis Project
Juanita Stephen is a PhD student at York University in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies and the director and co-founder of the Child and Youth Care Alliance for Racial Equity (C.A.R.E.). Juanita holds a Master’s Degree in Child and Youth Care (CYC) from Ryerson University and has over 14 years of experience working with young people and families. She is an instructor in CYC programs at George Brown College and Ryerson University and has been a part of the Crossover Youth Project Program Evaluation team since 2018. As an educator, Juanita uses her classroom as a space to challenge students to (re)consider the way they think about justice, equity, identity and power.
Honorable Justice Elaine Deluzio
Founder & Co-Chair Belleville COY Steering Committee
Justice Deluzio received her B.A. in English and History from the University of Toronto in 1982. She graduated from the University of Western Ontario Law School in 1985 and was called to the Bar in 1987. She was in private practice, specializing in Family Law, from 1987 until 2002. During most of that time she was also a Children’s Lawyer. In January 2002, Justice Deluzio left private practice to join the Belleville Crown Attorney’s Office, switching, in mid-career, from full-time family law to full-time criminal law. She prosecuted criminal cases, spending two years assigned to the Dedicated Domestic Violence Court, until her appointment to the Ontario Court of Justice in November 2006. Justice Deluzio now presides over Adult Criminal, Child Protection, Domestic and Youth Court matters in Belleville, Picton and Bancroft.
Penny Peters
Co-Chair Belleville COY Steering Committee
Penny Peters has worked for Highland Shores Children’s’ Aid Society for the past 29 years. Her role at the Society is liaison to the outside paid resources consisting of privately run foster and group care. The other hat she wears is that of co-investigator with the Immediate Response Team investigating alleged child protection matters that occur within the privately run foster or group care programs within Highland Shore’s jurisdiction. There has been a long standing working relationship with these operators to ensure the best approach to providing services to youth and to ensure that quality of care is met.
Rachel Bernhardt
Staff Duty Counsel, Quinte Court House
Rachel is a law degree graduate of the University of Toronto, with a Bachelor’s degree in Modern Languages and Linguistics from McMaster University. She has experience serving low income Ontarians in various settings including community legal clinics and as a lawyer employed by Legal Aid Ontario, most recently serving as staff duty counsel at the Belleville court house. Her role is to support self-represented clients facing criminal charges, including youth involved in the criminal justice system.
Liz Bosma-Donovan
Cross-Over Youth Worker, Belleville Pilot Site
Liz Bosma-Donovan is a social worker, community organizer, adult educator, and an active volunteer at the Wellington Rotary Club in Prince Edward County, Ontario. She has over 30 years experience working with marginalized individuals and communities in urban, small town, and rural settings. She brings an experienced, front-line perspective about the challenges of our existing social welfare system that hinders creative responses to effectively meet the needs of vulnerable children, youth, families, and communities in a preventative way.
Liz has a Bachelor of Social Work from the Maritime School of Social Work in Halifax Nova Scotia and a Masters in Arts from the Department of Community Development and Adult Education at OISE, University of Toronto.
Bailey Beattie
Youth Peer Mentor
Bailey has been a youth amplifier for over 5 years now, working in places such as Kingston, Toronto, Belleville, and Madoc. Her hope is to help guide youth through transitional periods in their life using a combination of: Sharing her lived experiences in the child welfare system, criminal justice system, as a teen parent, and former high school drop-out as tools to help youth navigate their own journey; Helping youth set goals based on where they want to go in life and connecting them with resources to achieve those goals; Encouraging youth to meet new people, explore new opportunities, and finding things in their community that they want/need to do!
Liam Smith
Youth Peer Mentor
Liam’s goal through the John Howard Society is to help those who went through the same troubling experiences as him in the system. He is a former Crown Ward. Now as a youth advocate he wants better for the whole system in general. Liam had a troubling high school experience and found it started to be mentally difficult to keep himself in school. He has channeled this into a project with Youth Collective Impact through the John Howard Society of Belleville. Together along with his peer mentor team, he hopes to make a difference.
