The Sudbury-Manitoulin chapter of the Children's Aid Society recently established a team dedicated to responding to intimate partner violence calls.
The team was established late last year, as Sudbury joined 94 municipalities across Ontario calling on the province to declare IPV an epidemic.
While other CAS organizations have developed similar teams, this is the first in northeastern Ontario.
"Intimate partner violence cases are remaining high," said CEO Elaina Groves.
"We're not seeing changes. When we look back over the years, our numbers are remaining the same."
Groves said IPV cases make up 30 per cent of all calls the CAS receives, and said child protection workers are already overburdened with complex files.
"When you ask child protection workers to be experts in all areas, it's very difficult, they have a difficult job as it is," she said.
"We decided that things aren’t changing, the numbers are remaining high and cases are getting more risky and complex, so we need to do something. For us, the answer was the creation of a standalone intimate partner violence team."
Four caseworkers who previously had other roles in the organization make up the team. Each caseworker is already at workload capacity and has 20 files.
"During an investigation, you're delving into it, you're doing a lot of contact," Groves said.
"When things have stabilized, you're seeing family on a scheduled visit and that’s different, but for the investigation time, it’s a lot of time involved, so 20 cases is a lot."
Some IPV cases deemed less severe have had to be offloaded to other child protection workers. Groves, who previously worked with victims of domestic violence, describes the field of IPV as profound.
'It's not a simple thing'
"The answers people throw out is 'why doesn’t she just leave?' Sometimes leaving increases her risk of lethality, so it's not a simple thing," she said.
"There's a need for specialization and a need for wrap-around supports for that victim."
Jennifer Andrews, a child protection worker on the IPV team, said each case is handled differently.
"We're able to specialize more in the work we're doing with families and creating partnerships with community resources and invest more time and specialization and training," she said.
Lindsay Grenon, an additional worker on the IPV team, said she's able to build rapport with the affected families.
"Being able to delve into the different aspects of domestic violence and the different ways they need support and what we believe would be most beneficial to them," she said.
Groves said the bigger issue of gender-based violence needs to be addressed, along with additional funding and training.
She said, sadly, a number of solutions she's been calling for, are the same she called for years ago.
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"Gender-based violence is an area of crime that has not gone away," she said.
"We need more resources that support the exhaustive resources that are there. We have violence against women organizations that we know, struggle, no differently than we struggle. Were all in the same boat. We need more of more."
