Finance committee  Thank you for this opportunity to present to the Standing Committee on Finance. We're very honoured to be part of the discussion today. My name is Bonnie Johnston. I am the CEO of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre in Calgary. In my short time today I would like to focus

Finance committee  That's right, thank you.

Status of Women committee  As soon as it's determined that they're coming into the facility and an investigation has to be done, they will meet with a police officer or the RCMP, who are now on site as well. That child will go to an interview room with all the supports, in terms of a child-focused environm

Status of Women committee  It's been developed over a number of years. We were experiencing in Calgary, and probably in other cities as well, that even from the time of birth hospital nurses were reluctant to discharge these babies, because they saw in the hospital the evidence of domestic violence. We cre

Status of Women committee  Much of our work is done in the community, so public health nurses move out into the community. They work with police. They're doing most of their work in the community. We are also connecting with a number of agencies in the city to make sure that these women are brought in to

Status of Women committee  At this point, we have all of the pieces from justice, law enforcement, social services. Health is in there. The crown is in there. The RCMP has come in as well as education. The big piece that we need more of, certainly, is the mental health piece. That's huge in terms of trying

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. First, as to why this is working so effectively, as I was just saying to Jenny, we are so new in our operations that we're working really hard to get some of that data that will really show some of the effectiveness. That's why we're working with evaluators right now

Status of Women committee  Similar to what's going on with the Inuit population, although we are in Calgary we are servicing southern Alberta first nations. We need to make sure that we have those services going out in rural Alberta and into the first nations. So it would be around timely access to suppo

Status of Women committee  Well, very briefly, we are able to respond really quickly. There's a wraparound service that goes in. Those kids can come in really quickly and, within a day to two days, all those services are wrapping around them, so you've got a more expedited and timely response to move these

Status of Women committee  Our experience—and this would go back to my days in child and family services—is that more and more it would be better for the perpetrator to be removed. Keep those children and their families in their homes; otherwise, you are segregating, moving kids out. You're moving them fro

Status of Women committee  We work with the police, and the child and family services. All the referrals still come through them. They are the legislative body that handles these referrals. Every morning at the centre we have a triage team from health and child and family services and police. They look at

Status of Women committee  Well, my knowledge base at this point would say that they probably have to be strengthened to protect these children. You know, for a long time this whole area of child abuse has been one that has been very difficult for society to get their heads around. Society actually does

Status of Women committee  Yes, thank you very much for the question. We really appreciate that. You know, we've been operational just under two years, and the impact that we see happening with these systems coming together is quite exceptional. I've been in this business for a number of years, and we've

Status of Women committee  Well go ahead, Jenny, with some of the indicators we've got. You're poring over all of that, really quickly.

Status of Women committee  Based on our experience and the insights of others who have been working vigorously in the fields of child abuse and violence against women, we appreciate the opportunity to make the following recommendations. Recommendation number one is that the federal government demonstrate