Happy retirement, Carol!

Carol Barkwell, the founding Executive Director of Luke’s Place, is retiring at the end of the week. To say she will be sorely missed would be a significant understatement. Under her visionary and ever-patient leadership, Luke’s Place has grown from a tiny organization with two part-time staff, sharing office space with another not-for-profit, to a nationally recognized centre of excellence on family violence and family law.

Carol and I first met in the early 2000s when we were both presenters at a provincial violence against women conference. That led Carol to invite me to speak at a Luke’s Place event for family law lawyers in Durham Region, and that’s where our working relationship and friendship of almost 20 years really began.

The beginning

Luke’s Place was established after Luke Schillings, a 3½-year-old boy, was killed by his father during his first unsupervised visit, despite his mother’s attempts to have that access supervised because of her concerns for her son’s safety. In response to that death, professionals, including Carol, and survivors in Durham Region came together to discuss possible solutions to the many family law challenges faced by survivors of intimate partner violence and their children. Those community conversations led to research, a report entitled In the Centre of the Storm, and a community conference attended by more than 200 people.

One of the many ideas generated at the conference was to create a women’s resource centre focused on custody and access issues for women and children fleeing abuse. Luke’s Place was incorporated in late 2000 and began delivering services in September 2003, with Carol at its helm.

Creative innovation

Carol led Luke’s Place in the development of too many innovative programs and services to list here; all of them designed to assist women leaving relationships where they had been abused and who were involved with family court. Here are just a few of them:

1. The Legal Support Worker Model: Research and firsthand experience showed the many gaps for survivors involved with family court, and this model – the first of its kind in Canada—helped to fill many of those gaps. Legal Support Workers are specially trained women’s advocates, who work with women throughout their family law case. If the woman has a lawyer – initially, most did, although now the reverse is true – the LSW and lawyer work as a team to provide wrap-around support. This model became the inspiration for Ontario’s Family Court Support Worker Program, which offers similar supports to women across the province.

• Pro Bono Legal Clinic: As the number of women without lawyers increased, Carol saw another need. The pro bono legal clinic was launched to provide unrepresented women in Durham region with access to free summary legal advice from lawyers trained by Luke’s Place, who donated their time. This clinic was in person, but when the pandemic hit, Luke’s Place quickly pivoted to make it available virtually to women wherever they lived in Ontario.

• Resources and training for women and frontline workers: We developed workshops for our clients to give them knowledge and skills to help them through family court, and then we made those workshops available to organizations across the province. We developed an online training for lawyers who wanted to better understand the dynamics of intimate partner violence. We developed and delivered in-person training about intimate partner violence to Legal Aid Ontario staff across Ontario. We did research to better understand the needs of women in rural communities, to support the use of screening tools by family law lawyers, and more. We developed resources for survivors and for their family members; practical tools to guide their journey through family court and to keep them as safe as possible.

• Collaboration: Carol’s commitment to collaboration runs deep and influences everything that happens at Luke’s Place. Collaboration within the team, with other organizations in Durham Region and across Ontario and Canada. These collaborations maximize the impact of our work and help survivors receive comprehensive and coordinated supports.

• Advocacy for systemic change:  Carol has always understood the link between frontline work and work for systemic change. Much of the advocacy work Luke’s Place has been involved with has developed from what the Legal Support Workers see in their daily encounters with survivors and legal systems. Luke’s Place has played an important role in advocacy that has led to improvements to family laws, court processes, legal aid and, because family law intersects with other legal issues, to criminal law as well. More recently, Luke’s Place has intervened in family law cases that will have an impact in the future on women who have left relationships in which they were abused.

Speaking personally

There’s no doubt about the far-ranging impact that Carol has had through her work, but I want to end on a personal note. When Carol asked me to speak in Durham Region in the early 2000s, I thought it would be a one-off – I’d come, I’d speak and I’d go. Somewhere between the coming and going – maybe it was when I was trying to hoist myself up into the front seat of the huge pick-up truck she was driving that day and we both collapsed in laughter – I found myself sticking around. In part, of course, it was because of the work, which was innovative, exciting and important.

But mostly it was because of Carol, whose vision allowed me to do what I consider to be the most important and creative work of my career. Through the work, we became close friends, sharing the highs and lows of our lives. We’ve cried together, but more often we’ve laughed together.

Through it all, we have continued to share a vision of a world in which women and children can live free from violence and the threat of violence. I know Carol has always had my back, and I hope she knows I have always had hers.

Thanks for everything, Carol!