STRENGTH

STRENGTH is an innovative trauma and violence informed outreach intervention comprised of two key projects:

• Promoting access to care for women affected by intimate partner violence in the DTES
• Partnerships for Trauma and Violence Informed Outreach: New Strategies to Service Delivery to Redress Violence Against Women

The Goal and Objectives

The overall aim is to promote access to support services among highly isolated and vulnerable women experiencing violence in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

The Approach

Its participatory action research (PAR) approach involves researchers, health and social service leaders/staff and women experiencing violence. The team will build on the capacity of current services to learn if and how integrating a trauma informed approach to outreach services facilitates women’s connections with health and social services and improves service coordination to address the populations’ needs. By testing trauma and violence informed approaches to engagement we can achieve our goal of learning how to work together to understand women’s priorities and foster safe access to services and relationships with practitioners. Ultimately this partnerships and research will offer an empirically driven model of trauma and violence informed outreach that includes an intervention that can be implemented and measured and can be further tested and refined at a national level. This project is innovative in its implementation and testing of a tailored intervention at a community level, leadership structure, and meaningful collaborations across professions and sectors.

Funded By

Vancouver Foundation and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

More Information

The Team

This project is being co-led by Dr. Vicky Bungay and Linda Dewar, Inner City Women’s Initiatives Society Executive Director. The team includes community organizations, researchers, and a community advisory committee.

The Inner City Women’s Initiatives Society’s philosophy of women-led service delivery recognizes women as experts in their own lives. Their expertise, commitment, and passion to the women they serve is integral to the success of this project and the Capacity Research Unit is very excited to partner with and learn from them, as well as all the partners in the project.

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