About Us

Michael A. Saini, PhD, MSW, RSW

Michael A. Saini is a Full Professor and the endowed Factor-Inwentash Chair in Law and Social Work at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. He is cross-appointed to the Faculty of Law and serves as Co-Director of the Combined JD/MSW Program. His work focuses on access to justice in family law, with particular emphasis on dispute resolution, triage, and early differentiation as mechanisms for delivering fair, timely, and proportionate responses to family conflict.

 

Dr. Saini’s research and applied scholarship examine how families experience justice not only through court outcomes, but through the processes they encounter at the front end of the system. He is widely recognized for advancing models that help legal and social service systems distinguish early between cases appropriate for mediation or collaborative processes and those requiring more protective, structured, or judicial responses due to family violence, coercive control, or serious parent-child relationship concerns. His work challenges adversarial default pathways and supports process-fit decision-making as a core access-to-justice strategy.

 

A central contribution of Dr. Saini’s work is the development of evidence-informed screening and decision-support tools that promote early, consistent, and ethically grounded dispute resolution pathways. These include the Parent-Child Relationship Concerns Checklist (PCRC) and the Elder Caring Conflict Checklist (ECC-28), which are designed to support triage, guide proportional intervention planning, and reduce unnecessary escalation and litigation. His broader research program spans parenting plan evaluations, parent-child contact problems, family violence, trauma-informed mediation, and the appropriate use of research evidence in legal decision-making.

 

Dr. Saini has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, books, systematic reviews, and policy reports. His scholarship has been widely published in Family Court Review, where he has held editorial leadership roles and is now serving as Social Science Editor. In 2019, he received the Stanley Cohen Distinguished Research Award from AFCC, sponsored by the Oregon Family Institute. He is also a two-time recipient of the Meyer Elkin Essay Award from the Family Court Review in 2018 and 2024.

 

In addition to his academic work, Dr. Saini collaborates closely with courts, governments, and professional organizations to strengthen early dispute resolution infrastructure and improve access to justice for families. He regularly provides training and consultation to judges, lawyers, mediators, and mental health professionals on triage models, dispute-resolution design, and child-centered, proportionate responses to family conflict.

 

Professor Saini is the President of Family Mediation Canada (FMC), Past President of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), a Board Member of the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children (CCRC), an Associate Fellow of the International Academy of Family Lawyers , and a member of the International Society of Family Law.