CALEDONIA—If they hit you, but tell you after that they love you and they’re sorry, that’s not love – it’s assault. If they threatened to hurt you or themselves if you ever left them, that’s not love – it’s manipulation. If they prevent you from going out, speaking with friends and family, having access to money, that’s not love or protection – that’s controlling. It’s all abuse.
If that’s where your story is right now, it doesn’t have to be where it ends. There’s hope, and there’s help.
Interval House of Hamilton recently launched its WEARS program, which stands for Women’s Education and Rural Support, and it’s now being offered in Haldimand through a new partnership with the Caledonia and District Food Bank. Sue Taylor, the executive director at Interval House, said the hope is to expand further into Haldimand County to offer women and gender-diverse individuals support and connection to services.
“We provide what’s called an inter-agency collaboration, so depending on what the woman may need, we’re going to access agencies or services that are available in her community to do a wrap-around approach,” Taylor said.
If someone who is experiencing intimate partner violence also accesses the food bank, they’ll be able to connect with the WEARS program. But that’s not all; the program is also working to develop relationships with local churches, hairdressers, etc., so that if a woman needs to connect with supports privately, she can do so.
“You can always give us a call; we can try to find a safe location near where that person feels the safest accessing us, and we can meet with them,” Taylor said; the number to call is 905-522-0127.
A multi-agency approach is needed when trying to address intimate partner violence in a rural area, because those experiencing it often “have very limited ability to access services, because most services that are specialized are in urban settings,” she said.
There are several layers of challenges when trying to address rural women experiencing intimate partner violence.
The first is that the “specialized services are very different when you’re dealing with violence against women, because the needs and the safety are different,” Taylor said.
Second, “the experiences for rural women versus urban women when it comes to experiencing intimate partner violence are very, very different. So, rural women require a different approach and a different set of supports in order to truly improve their safety and wellbeing,” Taylor explained, adding that rural women often lack access to public transportation, and the distance to services can be a barrier.
Statistics show that despite the difficulty to reach these services, rural women are most at need of them: “Rural women are going to experience intimate partner violence at substantially higher rates than urban women. It’s reported that it’s a 75% increase compared to urban women,” Taylor noted.
Along with being more likely to experience intimate partner violence, rural women also often stay in these situations longer, “so they’re enduring more violence. Sometimes they’ll stay in those situations for most of their lives, but the impact on their health and mental health is egregious,” Taylor said.
While many enjoy a greater sense of privacy in rural life, Taylor warned “that sense of privacy … is also risky” because abuse can stay hidden longer. Intimate partner violence almost always escalates in severity and frequency over time, meaning long-term abuse is the greatest risk factor to domestic violence ending in murder.
“By the time police get involved, that’s very much advanced along the continuum,” Taylor said, also noting the increased access to firearms in rural settings adds to the risk factors.
At the end of September 2023, Haldimand joined over 40 other municipalities in Ontario in declaring that gender-based violence was an epidemic. At that time, it was reported to Haldimand Council that from January 1 to July 11, 2023, the Haldimand OPP had received 286 intimate partner violence-related calls; in all of 2022, there had been 512 calls.
A report for Haldimand and Norfolk Women’s Services (HNWS) covering April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023 showed that there were 776 crisis calls; 772 counselling calls; 420 people referred out due to capacity issues; and 135 referred out to other services.
While intimate partner violence is a problem, it’s not one that’s getting adequate resources to address it, Taylor said.
At the moment, 43% of Hamilton is considered rural – this includes parts of Ancaster, Glanbrook, and Stoney Creek. Interval House is trying to address this issue in those areas, as well as extend into Haldimand. However, “the funding that we receive is minimal – minimal – compared to what we received to support women who are living in the urban settings in Hamilton.”
Currently, the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services only allocates Interval House $15,000 annually to address rural intimate partner violence.
“I don’t even know how you would begin to tackle that with that amount of funding,” Taylor said. “There are so many rural areas around the city of Hamilton that are just not receiving any sense of equitable service.”
While she has pulled a group of stakeholder agencies together to look at the issue, and there has been work on an advocacy campaign to try and improve the funding for these agencies from all levels of government, “advocacy takes time.”
The need can’t wait, though; lives genuinely depend on action happening now.
Temporary grants helped get the WEARS program off the ground, and the hope is that more permanent funding will be coming. In the meantime, Taylor and her team are doing what they can.
While the program does have a focus on helping women experiencing intimate partner violence, men and boys are part of the equation, too. Men also experience intimate partner violence. Taylor said if a man were to come to them and ask for help, they would connect him with an agency that specifically supports men.
Furthermore, this isn’t about painting all males with the same brush: “We see boys and men as allies to the work that we do, and we recognize that most men and boys are not perpetrators of harm,” Taylor said. She hopes to engage with and empower men and boys to help stop the violence.
Recently, Interval House received provincial funding from the Ministry of Education to work with over 20 sister agencies across Ontario to deliver a program in schools called Coaching Boys into Men. The program is focused on helping teens and young adults recognize behaviours that are harmful – such as behaving badly online, sharing someone else’s intimate photos without consent, etc. – and giving them the tools to address it.
Taylor said the program “really focuses on respect and boundaries and being more than a bystander; really engaging (teens and young adults) with the idea that you can step up, you can step in.
“We’re not calling out boys and men; we’re calling boys and men into the solution.”
Those interested in being part of the solution can visit intervalhousehamilton.org for more information on the Interval House programs, and follow a link from its home page to donate.
