Violence is a complicated issue, whether it's domestic violence, abuse, sexual assault, criminal harassment or any other form. Contending with it requires many different agencies within the community to deal with the problem. The Interpersonal Violence and Abuse Workshop, recently hosted in Yorkton, brought together the different agencies to discuss the problem and the various areas in which each agency is involved.
Rod McKendrick from the Ministry of Justice says this is the first of ten events in the province, designed to get everyone on the same page and able to fully understand what each different agency can handle when it comes to domestic violence.
"What we've found over the years is the more education we are able to give to people, the more tools they have to help support clients to give them the right and current information," McKendrick says.
It is important for each agency to know what other agencies can help with in a situation, since everyone has different tools at their disposal, McKendrick notes. He says that, for example, a police officer won't have the same tools that a psychologist has or a shelter has, and that those organizations can't handle the legal and criminal elements of domestic violence.
"No one agency can deal with this situation by themselves. If they say they can, I would have to say that they are not telling the truth... The community has to work together to address this situation," he suggests.
The workshops are province-wide, and McKendrick says that keeping Saskatchewan on the same page, as well as each agency in the individual communities, ensures that everyone in the province is able to have the same standard if they have a problem.
"It allows for consistency, because we know that in this generation people are transient.
We might move for a job, or a family might move to another location. So if we are involved in family violence or any of the other things, if we go to one of those agencies, we have to make sure that what we're hearing is the same as we would hear in the last community we were in. It shouldn't be two different things for the same incident," McKendrick says.
The session is also important to ensure everyone is current on what is available to them. McKendrick says new people enter the field all the time, and keeping them up to date on what is available is vital, as well as giving people who have been around for a while a refresher on what's available.
"People have said that they have been in the profession a number of years and thought they knew what this was about, and until they did the educational workshops went "oh, that's what that means." I think people got what they needed to get out of it, from a policing point of view, from a victim services point of view, or from shelters or community agencies. They took away what they needed to provide information to their clients," he adds.
Having people know what resources are available to them is one of the most important factors in helping a victim of interpersonal violence, McKendrick says, and without consistency and everyone knowing what is out there, it would be possible that the problem wouldn't be dealt with effectively.
"The more education we give to communities, the more options people have to address the concerns they may have," McKendrick concludes.
