Thank you. I could just say ditto for what these ladies said. I don't know if you watched me as they were talking, but I was nodding my head. A lot of these are issues that we all feel, and work towards. I'll read my preamble and then I'll talk a bit more and answer questions for sure.
First of all, my name is Katie Kitschke. I'm the Executive Director at SAFFRON Sexual Assault Centre located in Sherwood Park, a suburb of Edmonton. We're a community of about 100,000 people. SAFFRON provides two core services at our centres. We provide counselling for people who have experienced sexual violence as well as for their family members and supports. Our second core area of service is public education.
When I started with SAFFRON in 2008 as their public education director, we were offering presentations to students starting in grade 10. I asked why we were only presenting to students in grade 10, and the response was that's when the issues are starting. I said that we need to start in kindergarten, that we need to start having these conversations as young as possible. It took me a few years to convince the powers that be, so I was able to do junior high and then eventually move down to grades 4, 5 and 6, and eventually down to kindergarten. I actually had an epiphany the other day. This is not in my notes. I was attending an inter-agency meeting in my community. There's a parent group in our community. They were talking about some fall programs they have about how to tell if your child is developing naturally. They're for zero to five years old. I said that this who we need to be talking to, that we need to be talking to the parents of the zero- to five-year-olds, because that's the piece we're missing. We're missing the parents. We are in the schools, and we have this captive audience with the students, which is wonderful, but the key piece we've been missing is the parents. It's hard to get the parents engaged, especially as the children get older, because it's never their children who are at risk, or it's never their children who are perpetrating anything.
My epiphany is that we need to talk to them in that zero-to-five age range. We need to talk to them about how to talk to their kids about sexuality, how to model healthy relationships, how to create appropriate boundaries. We are seeing parents giving babies who are 18 months olds, if not even younger, iPads. We're seeing children having access to technology so much younger but they're missing that piece of education, because their brains aren't ready to understand it. That's the piece we really need to take on and focus on, that education piece with parents, as young as possible so that those tools—what a healthy relationship looks like and what boundaries are—can be given to our children as young as possible. We have to talk to them as young as possible about consent, and not force them to hug uncle Frank or whatever if they don't feel comfortable.
Part of the problem is that a lot of parents don't know how to have these conversations, and they definitely don't think they need to have those conversations in the zero-to-five age range. I think they do, and I think they need to do so in an age appropriate way. We spend so much time teaching our children how to walk and talk and to have all these other life skills, but we forget to teach them about sexuality. That's a really important component of what we're missing, but I digress. Sorry.
The public education program we currently have goes from kindergarten up to grade 12. We talk to them about healthy relationships, consent, boundaries. We tell the very young ones that if they don't want to be hugged, they don't have to be hugged, and if they want to hug somebody, they have to ask for permission to get a hug. We give them the right tools and the right words to say if they're feeling uncomfortable, or if they're feeling that their power is being taken away from them. As they get older, again in an age appropriate way, we talk to them about what sexual assault and sexual harassment are, because very often we have people growing up in these families, and it's been normalized. A lot of our clients who have come into our centre have said that they didn't know this wasn't normal in other people's families. We have conversations about what healthy relationships look like and what healthy sexuality looks like.
We also provide professional development training. This is really important, and this is also one of my recommendations. SAFFRON is part of the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services providers. There are 12 agencies in Alberta, and we're all part of this group.
We all strive to create an environment in Alberta where everyone who lives in Alberta, whether in remote areas or in urban centres, receives the same level of care. That's one of the recommendations that I think we need for the federal government. It shouldn't matter where people live in Canada. Everyone should have the same level of care.
Across the provinces and in the municipalities, we should be looking at what are we doing, at what is being provided. Are we all providing the same level of care and the best care that we possibly can?
We also know that sexual violence is linked to many other social issues, including addictions, mental health, sexual exploitation, medical problems, self-harm, suicide, parenting issues, poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, etc.
The majority of our clients are not just dealing with sexual violence. The majority of our clients are dealing with many of these social issues. We are seeing an increase in the number of our clients who have mental health issues and extreme mental health issues. As soon as they go to a doctor or to a mental health agency to report that they've been sexually assaulted, their mental health is put aside and they are sent to us.
We need to have better partnerships with sexual assault centres and mental health agencies so that we can provide the best care for our clients. We also need training in the sexual assault centres on how to work with individuals who are suffering from certain types of mental health issues.
As my colleagues mentioned here, we're living in a culture where violence against women has become common. Street harassment, cyber-violence, and disrespectful behaviour not only exist, but are almost encouraged and condoned. I have five children, and my four daughters will not walk on the streets. My daughters go to school in downtown Edmonton, and they are terrified to take the bus. They are terrified if they ever have to walk on the street because almost every single time they've ever had to do it, they've received some type of harassment.
Very often what we see is that there is a perpetrator of that street harassment and there are the people who are encouraging the behaviour. It has become a reality for many people, and not just for young people. I've definitely received street harassment, as well.
We need to understand that this is a reality not just in Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, or Vancouver, but in communities of 100,000 people and in communities of 20,000 people because it's allowed to be there. There's a tolerance for it.
In the work we do with our clients, we definitely see a lot of cyber-violence. We see cyberstalking and sexual exploitation, and again, it is regardless of where people live. It used to be that people would move to the small towns to get away from the big bad crime and things like that, but now with the Internet it can happen to anyone anywhere, even in the most remote communities.
Disrespectful behaviour towards women and girls is so prevalent in our society. We see it on TV. We see it in movies. We see it in social media. Now we're even seeing it in politics. It's a scary time.
On one hand, it's a wonderful time because we're here talking about sexual violence, and that thrills me, and on the other hand, it's a scary time because we are fighting so much to get to a place where this no longer exists, but we're fighting what almost sometimes feels like a losing battle.
I think that we have to decide as a country that this is not going to be the reality for our women and girls. We need to engage men and boys, as everyone here has said. This is a huge piece of what we need to be doing.
As was mentioned, all men and boys are not committing sexual violence. It is some who are committing the sexual violence. We need to engage those who want to help out and do something to stop it.