“He’s gone, he’s not coming back,” Castaldi says.

“It’s devastating to not have this program going. The manner in which it was done, it’s really hard on everybody. No warning, nothing.”

Castaldi says it is too early at this point to say what Women in Crisis will do moving forward, but the group’s family court support program will continue to operate.

“We’ll be doing everything we can to help women through the process,” she says.

“It was just really helpful having a lawyer to work in tandem with our family court support worker. They were able to get so much done for our clients.”

Another organization that learned of a cut Friday was the Legal Clinic of Guelph and Wellington County (LCGWC), with its Monday family and criminal law clinics now cancelled.

We just received notice this morning that effective Monday, the Family Law/Criminal Law clinic that operated at our Clinic every Monday afternoon has been cancelled. This is a serious loss of family law services for our community. — G/WC Legal Clinic (@GWLegalClinic) July 5, 2019

Family law services will continue at the Family Law Information Clinic Fridays at the Ontario Court of Justice from 9-12. As well eligible clients can obtain free summary advice over the phone from a Legal Aid Ontario Lawyer for up to 20 minutes by contacting Legal Aid Ontario — G/WC Legal Clinic (@GWLegalClinic) July 5, 2019

The demand for family law services in our community is high. The Monday Clinic saw people lining up 30 minutes in advance and waiting to speak to duty counsel. It was always busy and the people appreciated the face to face assistance and advice. — G/WC Legal Clinic (@GWLegalClinic) July 5, 2019

“We are concerned about the cuts and the decrease in family law services by the elimination of the Monday clinic,” Anthea Millikin, the clinic’s executive director, told the Mercury Tribune in an emailed statement Friday afternoon.

“While duty counsel services remain in Guelph, they have been severely cut through the loss of these clinics, and this will have an impact on the community. We don’t know what this will mean going forward.”

In an emailed statement to the Mercury Tribune, Graeme Burk, a spokesperson for Legal Aid Ontario, said the organization "is absolutely continuing to fund family law services, both via private bar lawyers and via duty counsel and other court staff."

"From what I gather, we’ve ended two of the advice clinics that ran Monday mornings and afternoons, that had an average of six to eight people at each session," he said.

"People seeking advice with regard to family law can still visit the Guelph Family Law Information Centre, which continues to operate without any service reductions, as well as contact Legal Aid’s client service centre to request family law advice over the phone."

Burk added the clinics' "small attendance certainly played into our decision-making."

This is the second cut to hit the legal clinic in the past month. In mid-June, LCGWC was notified its operating budget was being cut by 10 per cent, retroactive to April 1.

“A cut like this will have an impact on us, and our priority is to make sure that there’s no impact on client services,” Millikin told the Mercury Tribune last month.

“We're going to look at all of our operational lines in our budget, figure out how to do that without having any impact. It's challenging, but our bigger concern is for our clients, who are very vulnerable.”

Friday’s funding cuts stem from the provincial budget, first released in April.

At the time, Legal Aid Ontario had been anticipating $456 million in provincial funding. However, it would only receive $323 million. That funding is set to drop another $31 million in 2020.

LAO provides a number of legal services to the province's low-income residents, ranging from providing legal representation to those taking part in court proceedings — be it criminal or family court — to running a number of legal clinics across the province.

In April, Burk told the Mercury Tribune that in the 2018/19 fiscal year, the Hamilton-Kitchener district for legal aid, which includes Guelph, assisted in more than 18,000 legal cases, including nearly 11,000 criminal cases, more than 5,100 family cases and 1,125 refugee and immigration cases.

As part of the funding cuts announced in April, provincial legal aid funds cannot be used in refugee and immigration cases.