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March 2004
Nowhere to Turn?
Responding to partner violence
against immigrant and visible minority women
Voices of Frontline Workers
Suggestions for Change
If we could communicate only one message from these focus groups to decision-makers, it would be that there is a pressing need to act together to achieve a comprehensive and coordinated response to the problem of partner abuse among immigrant and visible minority women. By replacing the current kaleidoscope of systemic gaps and shortcomings with a more coordinated approach, we can give these women and their families a sense of hope.
"We have to link with other organizations and keep pushing forward. Systems are not going to change unless we make some noise."
"We need to put in place supports in the educational system, in social services, and in the judicial systems, wherever they might be needed, because that is where the decisions are made."
While immigrant and visible minority women share many of the same needs as other abused women such as the need for safety and protection, emergency shelter and longer-term housing, counselling and legal aid, income support and child care, training and employment they are even more vulnerable because they face additional barriers.
They often face cultural barriers getting out of their relationships, despite the presence of abuse, and they face more barriers in getting services that meet their unique cultural needs and circumstances. Canadian laws, practices, attitudes, and systems seem to pose further constraints.
There was general agreement that action is urgently required. The focus groups had many ideas about what needed to be done.
"Government institutions need to be open to hearing and understanding our voices."
"We should have more shelters; we have very few shelters and need more centres."
"There should be funding available for prevention."
"It is important that policy-makers recognize the problem and not be bogged down with definitions."
Raising Awareness
One of the most difficult challenges associated with partner abuse is changing attitudes within cultural communities, within service systems and within the larger society. Prevention takes time, persistent effort and public education.
Participants suggested that raising awareness should start in the schools, with education about cultural sensitivity, racial tolerance, and gender equity. They also wanted to see greater emphasis placed on understanding the issues that affect immigrant and visible minority women in the training courses for lawyers, police officers, immigration officials and social workers.
"Part of our responsibility is advocacy on any level possible and utilizing the resources that we do have."
"We have had governments that are not for the people, but for corporations. How do we get around that? We have to work to ensure a greater awareness among decision-makers, policy-makers and the justice system. People of colour and us as workers have to create a greater awareness of the issues we face as organizations and as a society."
Community organizations have a role to play, as do educational institutions and trainers. Focus group participants who are struggling to change attitudes within their own communities suggested that efforts must be made to engage in a dialogue among different communities about domestic violence and gender issues.
"Advocacy and mobilization are important. We have to work to challenge the system. It is important for women's organizations to come together on common ground, to show that we are working for women, and to challenge the system and demand equality. We have to challenge the systems together."
"We have to educate people, rather than blaming women for beating up men, or men for beating up women. There should be a process of educating; it's not just about empowering women by telling them about their rights, but rather educating both her and him about the rights of each other."
"We need to educate our younger generations that violence against women is not accepted."
Information and Immigration
Information, participants said, is power. Immigrant women should be informed about their rights as soon as they set foot in Canada, and preferably before.
"I would like to see that every newcomer receives a package and appropriate information from immigration officials."
A number of participants suggested that a full package of information on rights and responsibilities, including family law, be given to all immigrants both women and men at their point of entry into Canada. They also urged that more information be provided at Canadian embassies in other countries, so that people have a better idea of what to expect before they get here.
One of the biggest fears, if not the major fear, of immigrant women is that they will be deported and lose their children if they report abuse or leave the home. In most cases, the immigration relationship tends to be with the man. Some participants suggested that a gender analysis of immigration policies is needed in order to correct the balance.
"Women need information about their rights, all of their rights, and an understanding about Children's Aid or child protection, depending on where they live."
At the very least, immigrant women should be assured that reporting abuse will not result in their deportation and that they are entitled to services in their own right if they leave an abuser.
Language Services
Women need information about their rights and support services to be delivered in a language they can understand and in which they can communicate. A serious gap was identified in language services, particularly interpretation.
Not only is there a shortage of interpretation services for police, the courts, and social and health services, but what is available is often informal and done by volunteers, including volunteers from the woman's cultural community, who may be relatives or friends of the abuser.
"We also need appropriate training for interpreters."
This service should be paid, professional and of high quality. There should be rules about confidentiality and conflict of interest.
Breaking the silence about domestic abuse has been difficult in mainstream Canadian society, and it is even more difficult to do so in other cultural communities. Immigrant and visible minority women in Canada should not have to wait for years while they take language classes in order to be able tell someone their story and get the help they need.
"Women need support in their language of comfort."
Woman-friendly Services and Outreach
In a way, women's organizations and community agencies of various kinds are trying to replace the informal networks of family and friends that many abused immigrant and visible minority women are missing from their lives back home.
Organizations are trying to create spaces that are warm and welcoming. In some drop-in centres, women are encouraged just to come and talk and get comfortable with the staff who can help them when they are ready.
"More funding is needed for services specifically for immigrant women and children."
"We need to have a woman-friendly system in government and on various levels. Again, I would like to see the language aspect taken care of because when we talk about domestic violence, it means the police are involved. And in so many cases, the police will go into a house with no interpreters whatsoever, yet they know that this family is from a specific ethnic group. The wife does not know how to express herself, and she has no idea about what is being said. This needs to be addressed."
"The biggest fear I hear of is the system itself and the people who are supposed to be providing assistance. There is a lack of information available to these women and how to get it. When you come from a society where violence is acceptable and move into a society where it isn't, where there are rules, regulations and punishment for abuse, it requires an adjustment and before you are able to do that, you need to have information. And the information needs to be provided in a language you can understand and by people you feel you can trust."
Because service providers know that many women would not be allowed to participate in a program about women and violence, cooking classes or dressmaking clubs are organized to draw women out of the house. Some women are reached with information and support when they go to a community health centre to see a doctor.
"They need services from people they can trust; they need to feel safe in the relationships that they develop in the community."
The focus groups noted that more woman-friendly services like these are needed to encourage and enable abused women to come forward.
"We need to look at services that are going to provide the elements necessary for women to function."
"I would like to see many more training courses for women, services for women and at the same time, education for men."
"In terms of needs, women need safety for themselves and their children, they need safety in every area of their life, such as housing, and they need to be able to speak as a woman of colour or an immigrant woman and not be racially responded to with discrimination or oppression."
Focus group participants also spoke about the need for more culturally appropriate shelters for women and more outreach in the community to seek out immigrant and visible minority victims of abuse. Shelters usually have no staff time to do outreach work because they are overrun with the emergency cases on their doorsteps.
There are very few programs for men who are abusers. Such programs are another way to prevent further violence and help change attitudes.
Sensitizing Police and the Courts
Participants in the focus groups made a number of suggestions to help improve the police response to domestic violence involving immigrant and visible minority families. More cultural and sensitivity training was frequently mentioned.
Another idea was the deployment of specially trained male-female police teams for these partner abuse cases. The teams should have dependable access to interpretation services and to social workers who would get involved once the immediate crisis was over. Police forces should maintain a resource index of the community services available so that they can refer abused women.
"We need more cultural sensitivity training in the system judicial and social services. When the police are called to a home for domestic abuse, there should be a male and female police officer at all times, and the woman victimized should be given a package of information [outlining available services] in various languages."
Several participants said that police should be given education and sensitivity training to improve their understanding of the factors affecting abused women in immigrant and visible minority communities.
"Police officers should work for a few days in a community centre. It would help the police officer to understand some of the cultural aspects of the community, and it would help make the women feel more comfortable around them. In our country, there is no concept of calling the police for things like violence, so there is some hesitation when we bring police officers to group meetings. Although there is no mandatory aspect, police training should require them to work in community organizations for at least a few days. This recommendation has never been worked out."
The recruitment, hiring and promotion of more visible minorities as police officers was also suggested, along with ongoing and increased anti-racism and anti-sexism education, and internal mechanisms to detect abusers within the police service.
Similarly, the court system should recruit and hire more minorities and provide more sensitivity training to lawyers and court staff. Calls for a more "woman-friendly" justice system were common in each of the focus groups. Participants suggested that abused women should be "red-flagged" in the court system and given the supports they need, such as interpretation and culturally appropriate victims' services.
Alternatives to Abuse
If we actually believe that women should not have to live with abuse, it is important to offer alternatives that are viable. Offering an immigrant woman a passport to poverty for herself and her children is not a viable alternative. Neither is living with constant fear of retribution from her partner and his family and friends.
"We have started a pilot project that brings together people from the community to discuss the issue of violence within the community. As well, we have a group discussion with the women about what is violence, what to call it and what their rights are. These two aspects are very important because you are educating people, then it is up to them."
Some of the issues like the meagre support provided through social assistance and long waiting lists for affordable housing are common to all women facing an abusive situation. It should be unacceptable in this society, participants noted, that women return to an abusive home because there is nowhere else for them to go.
For immigrant and visible minority women fleeing abuse, isolation becomes a major issue if they are ostracized by their own communities. In such cases, access to culturally sensitive supports and services becomes even more essential, yet the services needed from counselling to child care, from legal aid to language services are perpetually under-funded.
Focus group participants also referred to overburdened probation services that can't adequately supervise abusers who continue to threaten their partners in the community.
Some of these women require training to get into the labour market, and others need to have their previous training and experience recognized by employers and professional associations. Programs that are designed to help bridge immigrant women and men into the Canadian workforce are effective, but they tend to be demonstration projects only, rather than part of a comprehensive systemic response.
System Coordination and Community-based Organizations
A major theme among the focus groups was the fragmentation of service responses. For the woman who is reporting or leaving an abusive relationship, she is facing a huge life transition, but our systems tend to respond in piecemeal fashion to her and her family.
"From a cross-cultural point of view, to help the women break the isolation we need counselling programs."
"The family has been fragmented, even before coming to Canada
men are staying and women are coming here. Families need to be supported as a family."
To achieve a coordinated response, the justice, immigration and human services systems must work together. Participants called on all levels of government federal, provincial and municipal to collaborate on a multi-system, multi-jurisdictional response.
"Lawyers and psychologists should go into these communities to provide services, instead of the community looking for them. These pools of experts should be hired by the government to work with the communities."
These institutional systems will also have to work with the community-based agencies and women's organizations that have established close links with women in many different cultural communities across the country. But in order to be able to support the government service systems, community organizations require adequate and stable funding.
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