Good day.
Thank you for your commitment to addressing violence against women in Canada and including me in this conversation.
Sometimes I get discouraged with the lack of progress that we make in the area of violence against women and then I consider the fact that really we've only been formally addressing this issue since 1960 in Canada and suddenly it doesn't surprise me. We're only in the second generation of attempting to address intimate partner violence in relationships. I applaud you for continuing in this conversation and recognizing that we need to continue the iterative process of improving our services.
It's an honour to be here today and to have the opportunity to share some of my thoughts and insights into the best and promising practices in this area. Coming here today I'm going to be wearing two hats. My first hat is as the co-chair of the Violence Against Women Forum for central Ontario, and the second is as the executive director of KW Counselling. We're a family counselling agency in Kitchener-Waterloo.
The first best practice I want to highlight is a process that our Violence Against Women Forum in central Ontario has engaged in that resulted in greater collective impact. The forum is a group comprising nearly 30 violence against women shelters and counselling agencies. We were established in 2007 in partnership with the Ministry of Community and Social Services in Ontario. The work of the forum was strengthened with the added support of universities, and that demonstrated the power of trisector collaboration. We believe this type of collaboration could be generalized to the federal government's activities and efforts and might result in the types of successes that we've witnessed in central Ontario
The forum was established in 2007 and our intent was to exchange knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve service system design. In 2009, the same forum completed a strategic plan. It reflected the voices of women, staff, and key stakeholders, as well policy direction at the time. The plan identified critical issues, priorities, gaps, trends, and it also identified three strategic objectives. Work plans were developed in relation to those strategic objectives and as committees began identifying activities that would support the work plans, we realized that we'd benefit from the input of universities, that we needed research, academic, and educational input as well.
We were really fortunate to be able to engage the efforts of the social innovation research group out of Wilfrid Laurier University; they're with the department of social work. They proceeded to conduct numerous literature reviews, research studies, training sessions, and we together held an annual symposium. I have brought along a bibliography. It's about 24 different articles that we've developed together with the university. You may find those references helpful.
Overall, the partnership has added value for everyone involved. More has been achieved than could have been achieved by one sector alone. The agencies provided their much-needed expertise into services with violence against women; the government has provided much-needed funding, coordination, facilitation of leadership; and the university provided their academic expertise, which we wouldn't have had available and wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise.
The collaboration has mobilized each agency and partner to work together towards common objectives and it represents a unique, exciting way of doing business. We believe that the model is worth examining and emulating, and it may hold clues for how to better engage stakeholders to maximize their potential to effect change in violence against women.
I've brought along a brief, which I believe you have, that describes it in a little more detail than what I've been able to share today.
The second best practice I want to highlight comes from our experience at Kitchener-Waterloo Counselling Services.
In 2007 KW Counselling Services launched a walk-in counselling clinic. It was one of the first of its kind in Canada. Since opening, the clinic has served over 10,000 individuals, couples, and families who were both absolutely surprised and relieved to see a therapist for an hour-and-a-half- to a two-hour counselling session on the same day.
Individuals and couples who are seen at the clinic are screened individually for intimate partner violence. We've found, through the screening, that approximately a quarter of our visitors to the walk-in clinic present with intimate partner violence. They're women who have been abused.
The Ministry of Community and Social Services recently expanded funding to this service in response to the five years of research we conducted in partnership with Wilfrid Laurier and the University of Waterloo that looked into both the cost and the clinical effectiveness of our walk-in.
The research shows that clients who visit the walk-in for the first time present with incredibly high levels of psychological distress. At follow-up, their distress is greatly relieved. Further, those who do best are the clients who have complex trauma, and that includes woman abuse. We also found that clients who present with depression and anxiety, which of course is a common presentation with women experiencing abuse, also fare better at walk-in than in traditional counselling.
Quoting one woman who visited the clinic and saw a counsellor named Stephanie:
Stephanie listened to everything I said. The comments she made gave me awareness and confidence. This experience proves that not only did I have to run from an abusive relationship, I had to get counselling. I will try hard to make it back next week as the relationship left me facing financial ruin… Once again, Stephanie is just amazing.
We believe walk-in counselling presents an effective alternative service to women and should be considered, among others, in service system design. I have also brought a short brief about that for your information.
I couldn't conclude a conversation about best practices in violence against women without speaking about trauma and its effects on healthy relationships. We need to ensure this informs all our services.
Increasingly, we have come to appreciate that many women and men, women who have experienced abuse and men who use abuse in intimate relationships, have a history of trauma, often stemming from abuse in their family of origin. We know that this trauma affected them as children. It affected their brain development, including their emotion regulation. Trauma also affected their parents' ability to form healthy connections and attachment with them.
Children who experience trauma and attachment disruptions often develop what the literature calls “negative working models” of the world. They grow into adults who struggle both with intimate relationships and with caregiving. Caregivers who have a history of trauma themselves often traumatize their own children in turn, because they simply have no experience of healthy connections and relationships to draw on.
We believe violence against women services must include therapeutically potent interventions for a range of traumatic events. At KW Counselling Services, our group, individual, family, and play therapies target and treat intergenerational trauma. Our treatment for men and women must include this if we ever hope to make inroads in the area.
Additionally, our services to children who witness woman abuse must treat the children's trauma simultaneously with the caregiver's unresolved trauma. This provides a powerful, corrective healing experience for both the caregiver and the child. The caregiver must be present throughout the duration of treatment with the child, and in effect become the co-therapist to the child. Trauma and attachment services treat two generations and future generations by increasing mental health, and the social and emotional functioning of both child and parent—