Family Violence Initiative
COMPENDIUM OF PROMISING PRACTICES TO REDUCE VIOLENCE AND INCREASE SAFETY OF ABORIGINAL WOMEN IN CANADA
INTERACTIONS WITHIN COMMUNITIES
Family Violence Interventions
- Program Name:
Islands of Safety
- Organization/Community:
The Centre for Response Based Practice
- Location:
Throughout British Columbia
- Website:
- Goals and Objectives:
To create safety by orchestrating positive social responses for children and adults who are at risk in their own families.
- Target Group Description:
Women, children, perpetrators, child protection workers and extended family.
- Program Description:
The program is designed to create safety plans for children and mothers who are at risk of violence to keep them safe within their home environments. It involves a series of four rounds of family meetings focussing on different themes including: family life and roles, rectifying loss of dignity and humiliation suffered by past interventions, family responses to violence, and social responses to, and by, the family (i.e. injustice, racism, breached restraining orders). There is a strong traditional component to all of these discussions.
- Program Successes/Impact:
Facilitating the return of children to their families where possible. Building bridges with the mainstream Canadian social service providers.
- Key Lessons/ Challenges:
Obtaining funding. Shifting mainstream child protection practice to a more holistic approach involving reconciliation and healing in the family unit.
- Program in operation since:
2008.
- Program:
Ongoing.
- Date modified: