Status of Women committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and the committee, for this opportunity today. Just to let you know, I'll be referring to Armagh House by its first name in the rest of my discussion with you today. “What is Armagh?”, some of you might be thinking. Well, it's not a shelter; it is a home

Status of Women committee  To start, we do a risk assessment when they first move into Armagh so we know their level of risk because they come in from either the crisis shelter, the emergency shelter, and/or through the Children's Aid domestic violence team.

Status of Women committee  Yes. However, we're finding the safety changes for the residents that we work with when they're actively in their court process for custody, access, and support. So we're reviewing the safety plans with the women at different stages when they're going through court. The reason f

Status of Women committee  Yes, they're trained and equipped to deal with this on a regular basis as part of our best practices. Professional development is always a must. Keeping updated with any new tools that are in place or are happening out there, we ensure that they're implemented.

Status of Women committee  If I could add just one thing with regards to the safety plan, it's around the court system. When the women are going through court, whether through the criminal process or family court, the judge often forces the women to provide their address. We are finding that is a big chall

Status of Women committee  We are starting to see it more often, yes.

Status of Women committee  We've implemented one program, and pertaining to the children, we've implemented a part-time child and youth program through our fundraising efforts this year, and that encompasses a therapeutic dog that comes in with the children. The children will read books and often the books

Status of Women committee  No.

Status of Women committee  I would like to make one suggestion, or one recommendation, and that is to hold perpetrators more accountable when there is hard evidence against them about a situation. I'll give you an example. One woman who had come to us had been incested by her father. Because of a delay i

Status of Women committee  To start with, the therapeutic dog program we have in place is for all ages, so a child does not have to be reading, they can read from pictures. That comes from a therapeutic best practice approach of course when you incorporate that into a program.

Status of Women committee  I believe there is. It's still in its early stages, but we know it is working. In terms of safety, how do children keep themselves safe? Access to the Internet is huge. Children are accessing the Internet. They're on chat lines, Facebook, Instagram, and so on. We're intertwining

Status of Women committee  ÷I do. I can share something with you that we are actively in the process of. For example, we have men on our board of directors, and part of our practice in this upcoming year is having a speaker's bureau and training this board of directors to go out there and engage them in pu

Status of Women committee  I believe that engaging men to be part of this process will—

Status of Women committee  [Technical difficulty--Editor]

Status of Women committee  Our process is to engage men for the speaker's bureau for our organization, not just to speak to organizations or places that contact us but actively being part of that in the community where we are offering the speaker's bureau to address violence against women. The speakers c