A Kitchener-based centre that helps young victims and witnesses of crime navigate the justice system is marking a turnaround.
The Child Witness Centre has caught up from backlog that, at one point, had more than 300 kids on a waitlist.
The centre, tucked inside a house on Duke Street near the Waterloo Region court building, helped more than 1,000 children last year.
“We have this space that was donated by the [Kitchener Conestoga Rotary Club], and the things that our caseworkers can do with tools and resources are at their fingertips,” said Executive Director Robin Heald. “What we do is support them through the many stages of the judicial journey, that are scary, that are filled with potential traumas itself.”
Staff at the centre help children process what they’ve been through, find support and share their stories in the justice system.
“We’re seen as a safe person for them,” said caseworker Krista McCann. “We have our facility dog, Monet, who helps to bring down the kids stress and make them more comfortable.”
But in the summer of 2022, the group had a crisis of their own - more victims than they could handle, which led to a waitlist.
“There was a perfect storm of contributing factors that happened,” explained Heald. “We had COVID; we didn’t have as much money to do what we needed to do. We knew we needed to stay in for the long haul. So, we scaled back our staff team through attrition and had fewer people doing more work.”
Experts said the growing demand for their services is a sign of two trends: more people coming forward in the wake of the #MeToo Movement and a rise in crimes against children, a problem they say escalated during the pandemic.
“We saw a surge in sexual assault cases, and I think that comes not only with crimes increasing, but also people being more comfortable disclosing,” said McCann.
According to the centre, the province has boosted their annual budget. There has also been an overwhelming response to a community fundraising campaign, both of which helped turn things around and increased their annual budget to $1.6 million.
“We have a campaign that we launched about a year and a half ago, called ‘Child Victims Can’t Wait,’ and it was a campaign to obliterate our wait list,” said Heald. “The amazing thing is we’ve raised over $600,000 with that campaign to date.”
For survivors like Heald, it’s encouraging to see. Decades ago, she didn’t have this kind of support.
“Doing this work is a gift for me. I traveled through the judicial journey myself as a child victim and witness twice, not just once. Our team is here to do the many, many things on that journey to make it easier.”
Heald says the fundraising will continue with the hope of hitting $2.5 million.
“We know that we have to up our game to not have a waitlist,” she said. “We’re looking for people to make monthly donations or give what and where they can.”
The centre says funding from all three levels of government only makes up 22 per cent of their annual budget. They hope to make that 50 per cent so they can move into a bigger space and expand in the next two to three years.
“Human trafficking victims are on average in our region, 16 years old,” said Heald. “In our region, the average onset age for human trafficking is 13 years old and those children are served at the police station. One of the thigs that we would like to do is include that human trafficking police unit with the other police units that are in our wraparound care, which is youth protection and family violence, and then they have the benefit of that space as well.”
