Status of Women committee  Absolutely. Typically at the hospital, if you've disclosed sexual violence at any sort of emergency room, you are either treated medically or you are going through the criminal justice system where you have a sexual assault kit done and you're working with the police. What Amethy

Status of Women committee  I believe there is a very large lack of understanding from many people, simply to understand the complexities of somebody who has been victimized. When we have been given the privilege of power and decision-making on our own, we cannot understand what that person has gone through

Status of Women committee  Again, it comes back to those building blocks that we need to put in place to teach them how to start again. We can't just assume somebody knows these life skills. We need to teach them, especially if they have been in generations of violence or generations of a culture of women

Status of Women committee  We train all our staff. We do a number of trainings that are available across the country, but we do a lot of on-site training. YWCA Lethbridge has been providing services for nearly 70 years. Also, to speak a little bit to what you were talking about in terms of a model, we ver

Status of Women committee  Absolutely not. I know there's that debate, but we want people to know where we are. We want the victims and the survivors to know how to access it, and we want the offenders to know we're protecting these women.

Status of Women committee  That will depend on the individual and the damage that has been done. We were talking about permanent brain trauma. They may need support for the rest of their life. That's the reality of what violence does. Ideally, we'd like to stop the violence and then we don't have to worry

Status of Women committee  As I said, abuse is a process. It's not a one-time event. Yes, that does happen, but it's a process. Many times these individuals believe they deserve the abuse. They don't know any different. If they leave suddenly, as we look at the cycle of violence, we see a honeymoon stage a

Status of Women committee  In the mind of someone who has been victimized by violence, they may see that they deserve it. They may not understand that it is in their control not to be abused.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, it's investing in the shelter and the second-stage housing. It's about the empowering, the growth, the learning of skills. We know that economic development is hugely correlated with violence, and violence against women in particular, and so if we empower them to ha

Status of Women committee  Absolutely.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, we need to invest in those. It's not just about their ethnic culture, but the culture they come with, whether from their family or wherever, and their attitudinal belief about where they stand as individuals in their pecking order. Again, it's really about meeting th

Status of Women committee  Thank you.

Status of Women committee  Yes. We work very closely with a number of first nations organizations around our community. One thing that we at the YWCA take into consideration is that we are not specialists in being a first nations organization; we work in trauma and in domestic and sexual violence. We partn

Status of Women committee  We often refer to it as our turnaway rates. When someone comes to us and we do not have that safe bed, we sit with them and we safety-plan with them. We look at other safe options. We also connect them with our outreach team. Our outreach team will continue to work with them from

Status of Women committee  I think, again, that's key. We need that investment from the federal government. Safety is a right. We all deserve to be safe, and the women and children's voices are not being heard. They're the ones who are being pushed under the table. We're hearing a lot about the opioid cr