Thank you, Chair.
My name is Yordanka Petrova, and I am the senior manager of the WoodGreen Community Services homeward bound program.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women for this invitation to address your study.
WoodGreen Community Services is one of Toronto's largest social service agencies, serving 37,000 people each year, across 40 locations.
As a leader in social innovation, we appreciate the focus of your study. Intimate partner and domestic violence is a social problem with structural roots, such as gender inequality, fear of retribution and accepting the emotional, psychological and physical abuse by the partner due to normalization of male superiority by our society.
Pathways to gaining economic independence through advancing women's education are often complicated by issues such as lack of affordable housing, low child care availability and affordability, and the need to access loans in order to pay for a post-secondary education, which automatically leads to incurring debt.
Intimate partner and domestic violence experienced by women and girls is attributed to a wide range of financial and social structural barriers. Thus, efforts need to be coordinated and focused on bridging the gaps between the siloed systems.
The WoodGreen Community Services homeward bound program is a program model that eliminates barriers preventing women from leaving unsafe environments. It was launched in 2004, and it is the first of its kind in Canada. The homeward bound program provides homeless or inadequately housed single mothers, approximately 80% of whom have experienced violence, access to four years of transitional housing, child care, mental health and family counselling, post-secondary education, and sustainable employment with the help of our industry council.
Coming from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, the women we help are united in the hope for a better future. They work hard to pave their path to sustainable employment, permanent housing and a positive, violence-free future for themselves and their children.
Included in our materials is a reference to an external study that details the impact of the homeward bound program in numbers, one of which is social return on investment: for every dollar invested in homeward bound, approximately six dollars are created in social and economic value. Also, 94% of the program graduates are safely housed upon completion. The employment rate shifts from 6% on entry to 87% within five years after graduation.
WoodGreen shares this model through affiliate partnerships with Peterborough, Halton Region, and Brantford. We have also worked with the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres to share learning and adapt with indigenous cultural considerations. WoodGreen Community Services supports policy, partnership and initiatives that will strive to empower vulnerable women and address intimate partner and domestic violence in Canada.
Based on our extensive experience with traumatized women and children, we would like to put forward some recommendations: core and operating funding to support longer-term programs with wraparound supports, focused on addressing the systemic financial and social structural barriers experienced by women and girls fleeing domestic violence; financial support for longer-term affordable and independent housing opportunities available to women and girls fleeing domestic violence versus temporary solutions, often through the shelter system; procedural improvements in the family court system when going through divorce, child custody, access, child/spousal support, with stress on proper resourcing of more effective legal representation to avoid retraumatization and further abuse; as a preventative measure, more focus on the perpetrators versus those on the violence receiving end, and support for research, recommendations and evidence-based approaches regarding educational and intervention practices.
Thank you so much for your attention and for this opportunity to address you today.