Good morning, Chair and committee members.
I work at the women's shelter at Lennox Island. The name of the shelter is Chief Mary Bernard Memorial Women's Shelter. We have five rooms and approximately 12 beds.
Basically, we help women do budgeting skills and life skills so that they can move forward on their own. Aboriginal women can apply to stay for up to a year; if they want to work on parenting skills and things like that, that gives them the time, and it also gives them time to look at housing.
One of the initiatives--I know it's a continuation--is to look at education. Some of the women who come into the shelter might not know the effects of harm in terms of emotional and verbal abuse. They often say, “Well, he doesn't hit me”, so education is an ongoing thing.
People from the community talk about some of the root causes as alcoholism, financial strain, and seeing violence as normal--the abuser as a victim of violence.
I spoke to an elder, and her words were around going back to the grassroots and having more healing for people. If I can quote her a little bit, she said:
We need to educate our families on healthy living and have the supports for all the community to see a safe community. Aboriginal women help each other, and we're the life-givers and nurturers. We understand each other. Right now the need is there, but we are so limited in programs, services, and funding that we cannot get our women to the next step of life, and they fall back.
Hearing the women's voices and seeing what they need means that one of the things in the community is having the solutions come from the community, and then members can hold one another accountable.
I know from working at the shelter that one of the services that could probably be enhanced on Lennox Island is counselling. There's one psychologist who comes in once a week, and there could be a lot more services and support for women.
In a nutshell, that's what I have to say.