At the Shield of Athena, we've always worked with the communities as well as the victims. We've found that when we work with the communities, we take a more inclusive approach and we educate more people on what violence against women is, particularly conjugal violence, what the consequences are and what the resources are.
I find that the prevention programs—and again I go back to this, because for us education is extremely important—are the first part of this linear progression for the woman in any case. It is the first step for the woman entering the system, but it is also a step towards bringing back a type of social consciousness to the community. We're educating not only the victims but the communities. For us, it's very important that the Government of Canada do this preparatory step before people are funnelled into the system.
I think I cited a statistic that only 30% of the cases of violence are reported. Where are the other 70%? How can we get the 70% to come out and say, “I'm a victim” or “I want to help a victim”, or “Can we direct the victims to this resource?” I think that is step number one. For us, public awareness is always step number one. So is the provision of services in a multilingual format. We cannot expect people to come to us. We have to be out there, we have to make this information available and we have to make it available in their language of origin. In the same way that we make this information available in the language of origin, we have to make intervention available in the language of origin.
Imagine how difficult it is for an intervention with a woman who is a victim of family violence. We call it a tripartite invention. We've educated what we call cultural intermediaries—or interpreters—to be able to participate in this. So it's the social worker to the cultural intermediary, the cultural intermediary to the client, the client back to the cultural intermediary and then the cultural intermediary back to the client. It's long, it's arduous, it's very, very challenging and it gets the work done.
I would say we need more information in the language of origin, more intervention—possibly in the language of origin—and more partnering up with existing resources. I always cite the pilot project that we did with the shelters in Laval. It's fabulous. We get things done that way. The shelters can accept a lot of the women there. We give our linguistic services and we do service a lot of people.