Hawai‘i Justice for All Strategic Action Plan
Strategic Planning Grant: 2016
Implementation Grant: 2018
Hawai‘i is prioritizing listening to the voices of all community stakeholders, using an approach that is people-centered and sustainable; fostering gateways or access pathways to legal, government and community services; encouraging collaboration and coordination of services; integrating and using effective technology; and building legal service capacity.
Its action plan includes:
- Creating a community navigator project to train trusted community leaders to provide accurate and relevant information to community members with legal needs;
- Developing a legal checkup tool and training groups to use the tool;
- Strengthening alignment and coordination of existing services; and
- Convening an interagency roundtable focused on achieving greater access to civil legal justice.
The following initiatives were not adopted as key strategic recommendations for the action plan, but were concurrently being developed in Hawaiʻi and are important to building a system of meaningful access to justice:
- Developing a State Budget and Policy Center;
- Completing the Microsoft Legal Services Portal Project; and
- Building legal service capacity and unbundled legal assistance.
Its implementation projects include:
1. Convening and training non-traditional civil justice stakeholders (community navigators) to expand and strengthen justice-related capacity and partnerships.
a. Developing a community navigator curriculum based on input from more than fifty legal service providers and key community partners and input from the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa;
b. Training identified community leaders who are trusted in rural and other communities of high need (e.g., religious leaders, librarians, social and outreach workers from organizations and agencies, informal community leaders, health clinic workers, public-facing employees of various city and state agencies, and school leaders) to provide accurate and relevant information to their community members, to assist them with self-help materials to resolve legal and other needs, and to refer more complex situations to legal service providers; and
c. Hosting at least eight two-day trainings in communities across the state conducted by three legal service providers.
2. Creating a Hawaiʻi civil legal aid interagency roundtable to better identify, align and leverage existing resources.
a. Working with legislative and executive partners to establish and convene state government agencies to improve coordination between state programs that help vulnerable and underserved populations so that these programs are more efficient and produce better outcomes by including legal services among the range of supportive services provided; and
b. Developing policy recommendations that improve access to justice in state and local jurisdictions.
Point person: Daylin-Rose Heather (Hawaiʻi State Judiciary)