BCIFV home > Newsletter > 2003 Archives > Fall 2003 articles

At the Insitute: A Focus on Prevention

Penny Bain

Fall is here, and although Institute staff members have enjoyed the summer weather with time off (and one wedding – congratulations to bookkeeper, Laura Kloppenberg) we’ve also sustained a full slate of activities.

In November, Penny Bain, Jane Coombe of the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, Victim Services Division, and Dr. Randy Kropp of BCIFV will travel to the National Victims of Crime Conference in Ottawa to present a workshop on the use, by frontline workers, of a Victim Risk Assessment and Safety Planning tool.

Research has established that victim risk-assessment and safety planning reduce the risk of future violence. The purpose of this project, therefore, has been to produce a tool that will support frontline workers and their clients to identify risk factors and
develop safety plans.

With funding from the BC Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, we have researched the current literature, consulted with workers and experts, and developed a draft worksheet to help frontline workers identify risk factors, determine priorities, and develop safety plans. We have now begun a three-year project, funded by the Government of Canada National Crime Prevention Strategy, to refine the worksheet, develop a user manual and user-support website, and conduct pre-pilot testing. With the Justice Institute of BC, we will develop online and onsite training materials to support new users, and commencing in January 2004, we will evaluate implementation in sites across Canada to ensure that the materials are practical, useful, appropriate, and produce consistent results. At this point, we continue to seek input from other organizations working in the area of intimate-partner violence. See our ad on the facing page.

Since our last newsletter, we have begun pilot testing BE SAFER, an intimate-partner violence risk-assessment tool for use by police. We have also met with staff from the Office of the Coroner to discuss a proposed process for reviewing intimate-partner fatalities with a view to prevention of future homicides. For further information, see the summary of our report on femicides in 2002 on page 26.

Also since our last newsletter, we have distributed 1000 copies of A Newcomer’s
Guide to Parenting Issues in Canada, a video and curriculum designed to help newcomers understand the distinction between child discipline and child abuse in Canada. We have 2500 copies yet to be distributed. Teachers and newcomer community-support workers are welcome to order copies for free. See our ad on the inside front cover of this issue.

In addition, we have completed revisions of our information booklet Assisting Immigrant and Refugee Women Abused by Their Sponsor in accordance with changes in immigration law. Print copies of this booklet are available for free to women-serving organizations; it is also posted on our website. We also obtained funding to revise The Person Within, our video, handbook, and workshop aimed at preventing abuse of children with disabilities. Work is now underway to ensure that this resource is suitable for parents and caregivers of children from many cultural communities. See our
ad regarding The Person Within on the inside front cover of this issue.

At this time, we are commencing several literature reviews, all but the first funded by the Institute:

• Dr. Sharon Agar is completing a literature review on children exposed to violence. Funded by the Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission, this review will assist us in developing best-practices guidelines for the assessment and treatment of children exposed to violence in their families.
• Olatz Sargarduy is conducting a literature review to develop best-practices guidelines for agencies that serve immigrant and multicultural women who experience abuse in their intimate relationships.
• The Institute has distributed requests for proposals from researchers to conduct two literature reviews, one to examine the applicability of restorative-justice programs to cases of intimate-partner violence, the other to look into the interrelation-ships between family violence and street youth, and the impact of violence on their health.
• The Institute has just published a literature review by Mark Bodnarchuk incorporating his research results from a study of men who abuse their intimate partners with the goal of producing a typology of abusers.

Over and above our own projects, the Institute is providing administrative support for three projects: The group Women in Action is conducting information workshops on family law for abused women throughout BC. Dr. Tonia Nicolls is conducting the Women’s Health and Decision Making in Abusive Heterosexual Relationships research project. Her goal is to identify factors that either assist or impede women from seeking help and/or leaving abusive relationships. The BC Coalition Against Violence Against Women and Children is conducting research intended to lead to the development and implementation of strategies to address the impact on women and their children of recent BC government service cuts, and policy/legislative changes.

Finally, over recent months, the Institute served on an advisory committee to the BC SPCA for the purpose of developing a series of brochures that highlight the connections between animal abuse and family violence. We will also help to distribute the brochures. See the article on page 8. It has been a busy spring and summer, and promises to be a productive fall. We look forward to updating you again in the new year.

The Best They Can Be

I have a friend who loves her children as passionately as any parent I’ve ever met. But for her, parenting is even more challenging than it is for most. Little wonder: without elaborating, her childhood and youth were the stuff of nightmares. In spite of this, so great is her love for her children that she rises each day and tries again. For this alone, she is my hero. It is my profound belief that, as a society that so utterly betrayed her by failing to rescue her from experiences that no child should endure, we owe it to her to help her find happiness in adult life. We owe it to her children to help her be the best parent she can be, because they deserve what she never had. We owe it to ourselves to provide these things to them and others like them, at any fiscal cost, because doing so will take us one generation closer to eradicating family violence.

In this issue of Aware, we look at healthy parenting. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to write, with expert input, the article on attachment theory. Although this theory is still greeted with skepticism in many circles despite years of supportive research, every word I read on the subject confirms for me that here lies a significant piece of the puzzle of child development.

In thinking about this issue, we wanted to include an article on corporal punishment vs. healthy discipline. BC parenting educator and author Fran Kammermayer notes that the issue is not just corporal punishment, because it’s false comfort to suggest that there is no harm done when parents punish children without hitting, but with yelling or humiliation.

Finally, we include in this issue an article about the effects of media violence on children and some thoughts on why protecting our children from it is an aspect of healthy parenting. Although research is far from conclusive, the precautionary principle would appear to apply: why expose children to something that can’t help them and might hurt them? These articles barely skim the surface of a complex topic, and even then deal primarily with parenting from birth to the teen years. Parenting our children as they run the rapids of adolescence is another subject, which we hope to delve into at a future date.

Every time I encounter an obstacle in parenting my own children, I try to swallow my pride and learn to be a better parent. Every time the media report on an instance of intolerable child abuse, I remember that few parents hurt their children without having been hurt themselves. Every time I see my friend, I am reminded that a parent’s love for her children is the most potent motivator of all, empowering people to surmount tremendous obstacles and rise to the challenges that each day of parenting brings.

Our hope for this issue of Aware, therefore, is to further understanding of the importance of throwing every resource we have into helping people be the very best parents they can be, no matter what their background. Anything less simply perpetuates the betrayal — of them, their children, our children, ourselves.