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 created a team with public health nurses, police, and child and family services to help these families with these little ones from birth to three months. It was protecting them, but it was also about creating an increased capacity for these families to look after their babies; to provide supports, if women were marginalized; to help them with the parenting; and to help them with instrumental skills that they needed to be successful parents.
There was an interest to move this back even further. We were seeing a number of referrals coming in from city policemen of women who were on the street, were pregnant, and were in high-risk situations. Again, it was moving to intervene earlier so that these women could be connected to prenatal supports and, as importantly, so that their babies could be born safe and with the types of supports they needed.
We were absolutely astounded. As I mentioned, we started with 30 referrals a year ago, and it's up to more than 240 referrals coming in of high-risk pregnant women on the street; sometimes it takes six and seven contacts to find these women. It's an astounding problem, and this is an essential service, which we need to look at more closely in our communities, for these women who have been marginalized and need help during this period of time.