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At the Institute: The New, the Old, and the Ongoing

Penny Bain

We have begun a new fiscal year with the re-election of social worker and college instructor Ms. Fran Grunberg as Chair of the Institute’s Board of Directors, and the elections of health researcher and university professor Dr. Colleen Varcoe as Vice Chair and psychologist Dr. George Tien as Secretary/Treasurer. We also welcome psychiatrist Dr. Susan Penfold to our board.

We are particularly grateful to retiring board member Dr. Derek Eaves, who first conceived of and founded the Institute. We bid goodbye and good luck to our departing members, thank our returning members for their renewed commitment, and welcome our new member as we embark on new projects, continue old ones, and confront the ongoing challenges that our work presents.

Under the heading of new projects, we are planning a series of colloquia on family violence and health in three to five centres across BC. Targeting health-care providers, anti-violence workers, and others whose work touches lives affected by family violence, this series will bring together researchers, policy analysts, and service providers to discuss the latest research on effective interventions to promote prevention of family violence and address its multi-faceted health impacts. Our goal is to encourage health-care managers and service providers to incorporate the latest understandings about the impact of family violence on health into their policies and practices.

A provincial roundtable discussion is the planned next step for the Children Exposed to Violence Best Practices Project reported in the last issue of Aware. The Working Group will assemble 50 to 60 service providers in support, counselling, psychological, and medical fields to discuss how to develop a coordinated approach to assisting children exposed to violence in their families.

The Institute also continues to facilitate the development of three versions of the Aid to Safety Assessment and Planning (ASAP) handbook, for victim-support workers, justice-system workers, and health-care providers. On October 18, six anti-violence service providers from around the province will meet to discuss the draft manual for justice-system workers, designed to assist frontline workers in identifying risk and safety factors and directing abused women to those who can assist them in developing safety plans. Work has begun on a similar manual for health-care providers. All three manuals will be supported by a companion guide on protective measures available for abused women. To learn more about the project, contact the Executive Director at pbain@bcifv.org.

Last but not least, as noted by our chair, we are facing significant financial challenges in the next fiscal year. The board and staff are assessing ways to reduce operating costs while continuing to strive toward our goals, such as examining ways to join forces with differently mandated but like-minded agencies. On this front, in August the Society for Children and Youth of BC moved into part of our office space and began sharing staff and some associated expenses with us. It is turning out to be a fortuitous partnership and we welcome their energy, ideas, and camaraderie as our two associations work side by side toward separate but complementary goals.