Language training is an issue. It's one of the great issues. The way that many of our clients have been accessing it, especially the females who've been trying to access it because of child care, is that they split the time in regard to the particular school they go to. They will go in the morning, leave their spouse at home with the child, and then the husband will go to classes in the afternoon when the wife comes back. Child care is an issue.
Access to child care is an issue. This is an area that we really need to be able to address. There have been enormous wait-lists. In the LINC classes and the ESL classes they say they're understaffed and don't have enough spaces. That has been an issue. One way of working through it is for the husband and wife to split the time when they go. We have also started conversation circles at the office over the weekends. The wives and/or the females within the household can come in and attend conversation circles in English, to help until they get child care opportunities available within the schools. I don't know how long the wait-lists are. It depends on each school. I really have no idea how long those are, but those are things that need to be worked on.
Domestic violence: this is something that really surprised us at the centre. We get calls from doctors. We get calls from the hospitals. We get calls from maybe other service providers. As an example, a husband came in and told us that he had gone home, realized his wife and two children were missing from the apartment, and assumed that his wife had taken the children to school. He waited until the end of the day for his family to come back. When the family didn't come back by 8 p.m., he went to the police station, he said. Once he got to the police station, with a friend who was interpreting for him, to make the missing persons report, he was apprehended and put in jail. He came out 10 days later to tell us the story. Apparently his wife had filed a domestic violence report against him.
This is what we're beginning to see. A lot of females are coming to us. Through the initial intake and assessment at our office, because we have Syrian counsellors there, one a psychiatrist, they've been able to disclose domestic violence. There's an increase.