NCJ Number
150920
Date Published
1990
Length
41 pages
Annotation
This report provides an overview of the service needs of Canada's immigrant and refugee women who are battered, the nongovernmental services available to meet these needs, and issues and barriers to providing effective services to these women and their families.
Abstract
Information came from informal interviews with service providers, who were selected through a snowball sampling technique. The participants emphasized the need to assure service effectiveness with respect to the experiences, fears, needs, and hopes of abused women. They also emphasized the added vulnerability and isolation that immigration or refugee experiences impose on women and that these factors complicate the reality of domestic assault. The main service needs are information about rights and laws, a supportive network, the opportunity to discuss and reassess beliefs and assumptions with women and men who understand their culture and can communicate in their language, subsidized language-training classes with training allowances and free child care facilities, culturally sensitive child care facilities, more job-training courses, affordable housing, and services in the woman's language. Current services include immigrant women's programs; immigrant family counseling services; settlement/multicultural or ethnically specific organizations; transition houses and other services for battered women; and mainstream legal, health, and social services. The analysis concluded that these women need more services geared to their needs and realities, access to more culturally sensitive mainstream services, and involvement in the development and operation of services for immigrant and refugee women who are abused. Footnotes, 36 references, and appended lists of resources and organizations