w & Policy
Legal Key’s Law & Policy Director, Jeannine Casselman, and Law & Policy Consultant, Rebecca Kislak, recently attended the CTC-RI Annual Conference. Jeannine, along with our project partners RIDOH’s Office of Family Visiting and Children’s Friend, presented on “Adding Legal Problem-Solving to the Home Visiting Toolbox: Lessons Learned.” This session covered the connection between law and health and lessons on how legal education strengthens family support and the care workforce.
We are excited to welcome back Hasbro Children’s, the pediatric division of Rhode Island Hospital, as one of our partners. Hasbro was the medical partner for the original Rhode Island Medical Legal Partnership, and most recently we worked together when they participated in the DULCE pilot sponsored by CTC-RI in 2024. Our current partnership will focus on supporting the Pediatric Primary Care team to help staff detect and meet families’ health-related social needs.
Important Dates as the New Year Begins
| Massachusetts In Massachusetts, open enrollment for the Massachusetts Health Connector is November 1, 2025-January 23, 2026. Visit Legal Key’s MA Digital Digest-Health Access page for more information on health care coverage and related deadlines. |
| Rhode Island Rhode Island’s current minimum wage of $15/hour is set to increase to $16/hour effective January 1, 2026. Visit Legal Key’s RI Digital Digest-Employment page for more information on the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and other employment-related information. |
Do you ever have the feeling that you’ve run out of vocabulary to describe 2025? It really has been a year like no other.
But in spite of the somber times we are living in, or maybe because of them, I remain optimistic. There have been efforts in every part of the country to resist, to persist, and to channel frustration into action in the face of some pretty daunting forces. And the Legal Key team has been engaged in all of it.
I am so grateful for each member of our team. The work has been hard this year. Really hard. And like so many others who do human-centered work, we have had moments of mental and emotional exhaustion. And yet. Legal Key has dug into the challenges, continued to engage, leaned into our communities, offered support, asked for support, and relentlessly sought answers to help move the needle on wellbeing. We have welcomed new partners, trained thousands of care team members, and answered hundreds of consult questions.
I’ve given up predicting the future, and so I won’t begin to ideate about what 2026 will hold for us. But I do know that whatever is coming, I am grateful to be in this work with Legal Key staff, our Advisory Board, our fiscal sponsor Third Sector New England, and all of our partners.
We at Legal Key wish you joy, community, resolve, and justice in 2026.
Amy Copperman
Exectutive Director
Legal Key’s team recently celebrated the season together.
(L to R, Legal Key Intern Meryam, and staff members Rebecca, Amy, Meg, Sarah, Jeff, Stephanie and Jeannine.)
Our democracy’s function depends on knowledge about how our legal systems work.
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© 2025 Third Sector New England, Inc., on behalf of Legal Key, All Rights Reserved
Legal Key Partnership for Health and Justice envisions a society where information about legal rights and systems is widely accessible and used to help people to thrive. To realize this vision, Legal Key’s mission is to create access to legal knowledge for health and social service sectors and empowers those communities to use legal problem-solving to improve wellbeing. Through legal education, workforce support and social care program design, Legal Key impacts systems, care professionals, and the individuals they serve.
Legal Key is a fiscally sponsored organization of Third Sector New England.
Information contained in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or establish an attorney-client relationship.