Calls to Regina Transition House increasing beyond pandemic levels

As Canadians face the highest cost of living in decades, women and children facing domestic violence are finding it harder to escape.

Women’s shelters and services say calls for help have increased beyond pre-pandemic levels.

“With the economic situation, everything is so much more expensive and for someone who’s planning to end a relationship where they’re experiencing violence, thinking about being able to get out and afford rent on your own and groceries and gas and all of those things for rural people who may need to relocate to a larger centre, to access services or get safety, that can be really daunting,” Crystal Giesbrecht, communications and research director at PATHS, said.

Giesbrecht said that in addition to making it hard for people who are experiencing violence, high costs are also impacting the services that support those survivors in terms of their cost operations.

She added that financial control by abusers is really common. Even if someone works outside their home, their partner might have access to the family’s bank account.

“The partner is controlling the money or keeping keeping it restricted so that it’s really hard to save up any money, to have any extra cash to be able to plan for the future. So leaving or ending that relationship sometimes means starting with absolutely no cash and waiting until your next cheque comes (is) very difficult,” Giesbrecht said.

She added that not being able to have enough for basic needs often forces them to go back to the abusive relationship or they are forced to access housing situations that are not safe because that’s all that they can afford.

“I think it’s really important to continue advocating for more services and increased opportunities for people to seek services, both at shelters, but also through outreach and other forms of support as well. Because we know this problem isn’t going away,” Giesbrecht said.

She said that it’s important for people to be able to access support when they need it as soon as possible in their own community by making outreach and different types of services in more creative or different ways as well as supporting and expanding shelters and the current outreach programs.

“We get a lot of calls where women are whispering because they don’t wanna be heard making a call to a crisis line; they have to hang up suddenly because their partner might know what they are up to. There might be screaming and yelling going on in the background,” Stephanie Taylor, executive director at Regina Transition House, said.

She said that they got over hundred calls this July, most of them from women aged 25 to 35 and that number shows that the need for safety from intimate partner violence is growing in Regina.

Regina Transition House is a is a short-term stay. “Women only have a few weeks to kind of figure out where they’re going to go next. And often their resources are very limited and the cost of living is making things more difficult for sure,” Taylor said.

The problem doesn’t stop at escaping violence. Lack of affordable housing and supports often forces them back where they started.

“We are seeing increased difficulty in finding safe, affordable housing for when they leave the shelter,” she said.

She added that larger families have a hard time finding safe housing as there are a lot of barriers to accessing subsidized housing. A lot of women come in without any IDs, no finances, so they have to start from scratch. Getting birth certificates, health cards before they can even sign them up for housing.

Taylor said that over the summer months they have seen more pregnant women asking for help after facing violence.

“We do know research shows that women who are pregnant are at increased risk for more severe forms of violence,” Taylor said. “They tend to be targeted more and the violence tends to increase if they already are living in a violent relationship, so we definitely saw many situations like that over the summer of women who are pregnant at varying screen stages and had had to leave suddenly after an episode of physical violence.”

Regina Transition House has eight rooms and can take up to 27 people, Taylor says they’re almost always at full capacity and struggling to keep up with consistent crisis calls.

“In our communities basically our indigenous women are at most risk, based on what we see, anywhere from 85-90 per cent of our clients are often indigenous,” she said.

“The intergenerational impacts of violence and due to residential schools, colonialism have impacted indigenous peoples in our communities and it’s a it’s a struggle to get out of those intergenerational loops of violence. And the other factor is poverty, racism. Indigenous people face both those things at a much higher rate than I think than any other demographic in our community.”

She added that newcomer women are are at increased risk as well, especially when they if they don’t speak English, are not familiar with the culture and don’t know how to navigate through the  systems. They are often the most isolated. 

According to a Statistics Canada report, 44 per cent of women experience some form of psychological, physical or sexual violence in their life. Saskatchewan has the highest reported intimate partner violence among all provinces and more than double the national rate.

Regina Transition House says it’s a compounded problem that won’t be quickly solved.. But supporting your local shelters will go a long way to helping in the short term.

“We’ve recently expanded into pet friendly shelter spaces and so we need people to support things like we’re having a gala on October 14th between with us and Sophia House for the Pet Friendly Shelter Spaces. And we are also, if they want to go to Shoppers Drug Mart and support the Love You by Shoppers Drug Mart Giving Shelter Campaign,” Taylor said.

Taylor added that when members of the community know that there’s shelters and domestic violence services in their community, they can let a friend or a family member or a coworker or a neighbour know. And when they see someone that they’re concerned about who who they’re worried about, they can let them know that their services are available and also let them know that they’re concerned about what they’re seeing and that they care and and that they’re there to support them.

Because sometimes just that recognition that what’s happening isn’t okay and is violence and abuse and that there’s help out there sometimes hearing that is the most important step for someone reaching out to access support from a more formal service provider like a shelter.