Status of Women Committee on Oct. 31st, 2016

[Cathy Grant]

We don't have the staff to keep track. We're very much understaffed.

We're grateful when clients say, “I know something's wrong” or “I'm having a really rough time and I know I feel better when I go to your program”, and they come back. We see that as success. We measure success as the relationship ending safely. We measure success when his partner feels that he's playing a meaningful role in the family now.

There are so many different ways of measuring success that we don't feel we have the right to really name that, since we're not the ones directly impacted by his choices.

[Harvey Bate]

I have the advantage of being a user of the New Leaf service in my normal day-to-day job in child welfare. We know that the program offers meaningful change to our families. When we get men who engage in that service, they typically don't come back. If they don't engage in the service, it's on their mind or whatever, and it's likely that they may come back, or they opt out and get another service.

However, men who engage in New Leaf for a six-month period typically are there because they want to be there. They typically get it, and things start to change for them. That's not to say they won't run into trouble, but that's one of the reasons I became part of New Leaf: because I saw the success it was having and I wanted to support it.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Absolutely.

What are some of the best modes of education that you use in communicating with men who in the past were involved in violence against women?

[Cathy Grant]

We sit in a circle and we just talk to them. It's not rocket science. It's relationship stuff, parenting stuff, not rocket science. It's just about being real with them and challenging them. The other men in the group, because there's such a mix of experience and buy-in into the program, will do it with each other. Sometimes our best groups are when we sit back and watch these men do it with each other. It's beautiful.

We do some flip charts for those who are visual. We do some talks. When we talk about parenting, I have specific handouts for them to take home. We don't have a lot of written material on the main program, again because of staffing issues. It has always been an issue.

Given the workload with the pro-arrest policies and all the different laws that have changed, and the high-risk cases and case conferencing, each case is more complex and a lot more work. The staff stays the same, but our numbers keep growing. Our focus is on working with the men, and the young men as much as possible.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Awesome.

Harvey, do you have anything to add to that?

[Harvey Bate]

I think they hold them accountable, more so than maybe some of the other programs, on a more personal level.

The group actually gets down and says, “Hey man, you can't skip out on this; you gotta....” New Leaf is really good at liaising with other service providers. There were some parts you didn't hear about in the presentation because we didn't have time to talk about them, but they're constantly having meetings with child welfare—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry; that's your time.

Now we'll go to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'll invite the witness to finish his sentence, and then I'll get into my questions.

[Harvey Bate]

Thank you. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Yes, they liaise with probation services and make sure the men are following what they're supposed to do. They liaise with child welfare. They keep us informed. They give us real-time information about the men, and we'll step up and not be afraid to challenge them about the things that are going on in their lives. I think that's one of the things that makes them successful.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

The program that you're describing at New Leaf on the east coast of the country sounds very similar to a program that is on the west coast, where I'm elected, in Nanaimo, British Columbia. It's a town of 100,000 people.

The Haven Society, just in the last year or so, has identified that in the first 24 hours after a woman leaves a violent relationship, the male partner—it's almost always the man that's being left—is particularly amenable to intervention, changing his ways, and finding a way to reconcile. Because women so often will return to a violent relationship, the Haven staff are very committed to making it as safe for the woman as they can. This is maybe a conversation from a year ago, so they might have moved on from some of these practices.

I would be interested to know if this sounds familiar to you or if you have ideas here. When they create an exit plan for the woman and they have her and her children come to shelter, she'll leave a little card behind, when they figure out a way for her to do that safely. It will say, “I can be reached through this intermediary at this phone number. Please contact me through this person within the next 24 hours. I would like to talk with you about why I left. I'd like to explain, and I'd like to find a way to make things safe for us and our children.”

That brings the men in to what used to be a women's shelter. I mean not into it literally, but into the process. Although all the women's shelters across the whole country are so stretched, if they can find a bit of capacity to cultivate safe and respectful relationships with the men, that has the hope of ultimately reducing the workload over time.

The program is called “Men Choose Respect”. The men, as you're describing, have to voluntarily want to be part of it, but they have a particular incentive. They'll maybe be able to keep their family together, or at least they'll know they've tried.

I am curious to hear your reflections on that and whether that sounds parallel to some of the programs you've heard about.

I know that on our side, the big crunch is core funding. I'm hearing you say the same, that staffing is your biggest barrier. If you can describe it, what are the constraints on going all the way to that kind of holistic program that we think would help all families in the end?

[Cathy Grant]

To address that staffing piece, that's not our only problem. Our funding hasn't increased in 29 years. The budget they give us has been the same for all those years.

On the other piece, I know our program, and that's what I can speak to with the most knowledge. We're not about keeping families together. If that happens, excellent, but sometimes too much harm has been done. If men come in thinking we are responsible for helping him get his family back, then that's a whole other layer of issues that we then have to deal with him on. It's his opportunity to sit back and recognize that his behaviours have been choices. I think that's a big difference with our program. It's not about keeping families together. It's about stepping back and holding yourself accountable and then moving forward in a good way from there.

We work closely with the women's shelter. We do women's information sessions with them. We discuss things about his attendance and whether or not he has participated in the program. We recognize that she's often facing some very difficult decisions. The more accurate information she has, the safer the decisions she can make.

Our program focuses around safety. That's our bottom line. Once that's addressed and people are in their services and moving forward, then we support whatever choices they make after that in terms of what's going on with the family.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I appreciate the clarification.

I really did misspeak. The intention of the program I'm describing is not family unification; it is family safety, however that looks.

[Harvey Bate]

New Leaf can also be, but it doesn't have to be, a voluntary organization. Some of the men are mandated through child welfare and/or through probation. One of the things that New Leaf is particularly good at is dealing with men who are resistant. We don't have to have a man come in to the program who doesn't want to be there. We can work with that man and still effect good change over time. We just need the time to do it.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

You said probation or...? What was the second one?

[Harvey Bate]

Child welfare.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Child welfare.

[Harvey Bate]

They're basically saying, “If you don't go....”

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

If you had increased core funding, what might that look like? How much more impact would you be able to have?

[Cathy Grant]

We would be able to do a lot more of the work with youth.

The Law Foundation funded us to do that work, and that funding ended. We see it as the only preventative work we do, and so we keep trying to find ways to do some measure of it.

I developed and implemented a parenting program a number of years ago, when we had some funding. There are a lot of amazing parenting programs out there, but this one was based on the premise that harm has been done in this family. The other programs are making the assumption that home is safe.

The men had to work through their issues of minimizing and denying and a lot of the issues with their partners because we would accept them into the parenting program so they could be focused on their kids. They would show up an hour early. The group was two hours long, and I would be kicking them out an hour after the group ended, saying I had to go home to my kids.

Many of them wept on the last night, and I told them I hadn't gone anywhere. They could still show up for group and ask me questions. It was so impactful for them because now they could participate in discussions with the mother of their children, whether they were together or not, and know what they were talking about. We would contact her and offer her the same information as in the handouts and stuff, so he couldn't use this information to sabotage her or to undermine her, because that's always an issue. These relationships have been unhealthy and—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry. That's your time.

We have to go to Ms. Vandenbeld for seven minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

If you wanted to continue on that thought, please do.

[Cathy Grant]

Okay. The last time we received funding for that was 2002. I still have all the information I developed and I still seize the opportunity whenever I can in groups to talk about kids and child development and those types of things, but it's very difficult with an open group of guys coming and going to do anything consistently.

There are a number of different areas that New Leaf could expand and grow.

[Harvey Bate]

Our hope was to take the Changing Male Conversations program to a manual. With that change, it could be delivered in every school, though obviously not by New Leaf. However, if we had some more funding, we could at least take it to the place where it can be.

About six months ago, one of our long-time staff, Ron Kelly—not the one Cathy mentioned—was retiring. He was reducing his hours. Occasionally we'll get calls from schools to do one-on-one work with young men as a preventative measure. He said he was going to have to reduce that, so he cut it back to 25 young men, and that was on the side.

We've reduced that, but we're still doing some of that. We've got five or six or seven young men who are particularly having problems with anger and dealing with young women in the schools. We work with them one-on-one because nobody else can or will.

We could do a lot more work if we had more funding and more staff.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

What are your sources of funding?

[Harvey Bate]

The CMC is funded by a grant from the United Way in Pictou County. We had to put in a proposal. It's two-year funding. It's finite. It's going to end.

We have two permanent staff and a small budget for office supplies and rent that comes from the provincial government. That's been the same since we got it.

We used to have donations. There used to be a law group—what was that called, the money from the law? The lawyers' money?