Safety Together: Addressing gender-based violence and the family policing system
Children and their families deserve to be safe together.
Safety Together is a community-driven research project developed through the BC Family Well-Being Coalition.
Grounded in knowledge shared by lived experience experts, the report identifies six systemic sites where gender-based violence (GBV) and family policing intersect to increase risks and create harmful impacts for survivors, families, and children.
The six sites of intersection are:
- The shared history and overlapping harms of GBV and family policing
- Service provision as administrative violence
- Mandatory reporting
- Family policing investigations and interventions
- Intersecting legal systems
- Government custody of children and separation from family
“Women are struggling because they’re taking care of everyone else (their kids, elders) and potentially experiencing violence – and also being scrutinized and blamed for their parenting.”
— Community Expert
Transformative calls for change (PDF)
Transformative calls for change
Throughout the report, community experts call for bold shifts—away from family policing and towards family well-being.
Safety Together highlights the transformative changes needed to redirect resources away from harmful systems of policing towards wholistic, relational family well-being aligned with families’ self-determination.
The report outlines the action needed on many levels by advocates, supporters, service providers, organizations, and policymakers.
Read the transformative calls for change (PDF).
Project ethics
The project is rooted in the Family Well-being Coalition’s values of equality, justice, accountability, decolonization, wholism, trauma-informed approaches, family- and relationship-centerdness, cultural safety, harm reduction, and self-determination. It has been approved by the Community Research Ethics Office.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the organizations who worked with us to co-host a series of dialogues with community experts:
KANDU is a peer-led organization that saves lives and supports wellbeing through compassionate, culturally safe, spiritually-inclined, and relationship-based health supports for vulnerable people of all nations in the Okanagan region.
Mothers Matter Canada is a national consortium of organizations that facilitates peer based mother-to-mother connections, to support socially isolated and low economic status mothers and their families.
RainCity Housing and Support Society provides housing and support programs based on inclusive, compassionate, and reciprocal relationships with over 2000 people across BC’s Lower Mainland, and the Sunshine Coast.
We also thank the BC Federation of Youth in Care Networks (BC Fed) for supporting a youth specific consultation session to bring youth wisdom into the project.
BC Fed is a youth driven, peer-based organization that supports “young people in and from government care to make connections, build their skills, explore their interests, and have their voices heard.”
- Alysha McFadden
- Amy Zhou
- Cheyenne Stonechild, Muscowpetung First Nation, Saskatchewan
- Blue Thunderbird Women, Sandy Bay First Nation
- Huuyatlh (Tabatha Frank), Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations, Ahousaht First Nations and Muchalaht First Nations
- Lorelei Williams, Skatin Nation and Sts’ailes
- Louise B
- Rachel S
- Sandra Pronteau, Cree-Metis
- Swallow Z.
- N.
- Brylee
- K., Saulteaux Band
- Jay; Johana
- Kori, Long Plain First Nation
- ksasqt, Westbank First Nation
- Langley
- Niiohontéhsha, Six Nations of the Grand River
- Reem
- Reina
- Salma
- Samar
- Sofia
- Tami
- Tammy
- Tanisha, Pasqua First Nation
- Tessie, Pasqua First Nation
- Vanessa; W.A.
- and many, many anonymous contributors.
This project has been funded through Women and Gender Equality Canada’s Women’s Program and the Law Foundation of BC.
Contact the project team
For inquiries about the Safety Together report, please contact us at community@westcoastleaf.org.
