Big Hill Haven women’s shelter is inviting the community to become natural supporters to survivors of domestic violence through the second phase of their Supporting the Supporters program which began Sept. 22.
A series of three virtual community action forums will be spread over the fall months, encouraging more conversation around domestic abuse and how to support those affected by it.
Big Hill Haven fund development and public relations officer Tara McFadden said the program provides the knowledge, tools and patience for the community to work toward a solution together.
“Often if you’re going through a [domestic abuse] situation, you’re telling your hairdresser or your massage therapist or your friends what’s going on,” she said. “You’re reaching out to your informal network often before you would ever engage with formal networks of organizations like ourselves [Big Hill Haven] or the RCMP. The Supporting the Supporters program is about providing resources to those groups to be able to both first recognize domestic violence when you’re hearing it and secondly, to respond to it. This program does a really good job of helping us to respond to what we hear in a right way.”
The forums will be panel discussions between participants and survivors. The goal is to equip all those who participate with the knowledge and training to support survivors. The second session focuses specifically on inviting men and boys to become part of the solution of ending domestic violence.
“Research shows that men and boys play an important role in domestic violence prevention,” McFadden said. “We delivered an entire workshop [in May] on the topic of men and boys, so this builds on that.”
Patti Fisher, co-founder and program manager of Big Hill Haven shared in a press release that every three days a woman in Canada is murdered by her current or past intimate partner. One in six Canadians knows someone who is experiencing domestic violence and Alberta has the second-highest rate of self-reported spousal violence in Canada.
The pandemic continues to exacerbate these findings.
“Calls for help and requests for shelter have increased dramatically throughout the pandemic,” Fisher said in the release. “We have an epidemic within a pandemic.”
Demands for the shelter have increased and client contact has spiked 141 per cent since the beginning of their fiscal year last August, according to the non-profit society’s 2020/21 annual report.
Big Hill Haven served 43 clients and provided 278 nights of shelter across their broad area of coverage, which supports about 60,000 people across Cochrane, Bearspaw, Springbank, Bragg Creek, Cremona, Redwood Meadows and Ghost Lake Village, according to the same report.
The increase in clients, McFadden said, is due both in part to a greater number of women experiencing domestic abuse and Big Hill expanding its supports and reaching more women within these communities.
In the past year, the shelter was able to open their first emergency shelter space, The Haven, while also creating another frontline position to meet community demands.
The community action forums are a continuation of the Supporting the Supporters program launched earlier this spring with the first phase, a five-session online course promoting meaningful discussions around domestic violence with topics ranging from how the RCMP responds to incidents, engaging men and boys in the conversation and recognizing and responding to survivors. Big Hill Haven saw between 60-70 people participate in the workshops, 11 of which attended each one and received certificates to acknowledge their commitment.
McFadden said the virtual events expand their reach even more.
“Adjusting to the world we’re in right now, these sessions are all via Zoom, which I think actually reduces those barriers to participate and makes it a little easier than having to drive across town to a meeting,” she said.
The sessions are open to anyone and free to attend. Each one will begin at 5:30 p.m. with the first of the three sessions taking place on Sept. 22 called Support the Supporters: Continuing the Conversation. The second event focusing on men and boys takes place Oct. 20 and the last session on Nov. 24 will involve a celebration and graduation from the program with special guest speaker Melody Bundt, who will speak about her journey through domestic violence.
Those who wish to participate must register in advance through Big Hill Haven’s Facebook event page to obtain a Zoom meeting link. For more information people can also reach out to [email protected].
