Homes for Women / Toits pour elles a compilation of Recommendations to address women’s homelessness in Canada from Research Reports Available in electronic format on homesforwomen ca “News and Events” Table of Contents
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- Service Provider Staff Training
- 10. Research Public policy
- Physical and mental health
- Project evaluation assessment
- Rural women An investigation of the extent and forms of women’s homelessness in rural areas. [No Room of Her Own] 11. Public Awareness Advocacy
Social & community servicesFront-line services are the key delivery mechanism for a wide variety of critical interventions for at-risk people. If interventions are to be effective, front-line services must be adequately and appropriately funded and supported. This holds true regardless of the mode of delivery – nonprofit voluntary agency or government agency. [You Just Blink...] Integrated Service Model and Service Collaboration Interagency protocols and tools for collecting and sharing accurate and relevant information are needed to address this critical gap in knowledge about the incidence and determinants of homelessness for Northern women. Also vital are tools for developing service effectiveness indicators and for monitoring outcomes. [You Just Blink...] Service delivery should shift from service-provision to capacity-building model. [Better Off in a Shelter?...] Provide adequate funding to service agencies to allow them to keep appropriate records and to access and share information. Most service agencies, especially those in the voluntary sector, are in a daily struggle to maintain basic services. They have a hard time recruiting and maintaining well-trained staff and do not have adequate resources for up-to-date equipment. If information collection, management and sharing are to be used as a valuable tool for decreasing the incidence and harmful impacts of homelessness, then service agencies need the resources (e.g. staff time and expertise, adequate technology) to carry out the information management functions discussed above. [You Just Blink...] Service providers have no mechanism through which to identify and develop proposals to address the needs of certain groups of at-risk or homeless women. By encouraging new initiative proposals, the creativity of the non-profit sector could be unleashed to address homelessness in ways that build on the strengths of each provider, or to develop joint proposals to better serve marginalized women. [You Just Blink...] Nurture the creation of collaboratives that are dedicated to addressing the full range of determinants of women’s homelessness and build their capacity to function effectively. Bringing all stakeholders together in a sustained and productive way, so that the cumulative impact of their efforts makes a substantial and positive difference for women and their families, will mean moving past interagency meetings or working groups. What is required is the creation of long-term collaboratives. These collaboratives require dedicated resources, incentives, capacity-building and other types of support. [You Just Blink...] To avoid contributing to newcomers’ stress, communication and collaboration between immigrant serving and mainstream agencies need improvement. [Testing an Integrated…] Ensure that resources are available to address all issues that negatively impact on Aboriginal women’s well-being, including poverty, lack of housing, sexualized and racialized violence, employment, education, etc. [Aboriginal Women and Homelessness…] Shelters and services should work to ensure that women are informed about all benefits available to them and the means to request them (social assistance and housing). [Better Off in a Shelter?...] Settlement services for Canadians born overseas and for refugee claimants are needed and eligibility for services need to be streamlined. [Testing an Integrated…] Case Management and Long Term Support …case management and appropriate linkages to community supports can lead to stable housing, recovery from substance abuse, participation in job training and life skill development programs, and employment. [Health Status] …Many types of support are needed to enable homeless women to move along the service spectrum from high need to greater independence (i.e., from emergency support to long-term, supportive and structured living, to independent living and finally to after-care services). This support needs to be holistic and individualized. Service providers need the flexibility to create innovative new services where gaps exist. …critically needed services include addictions treatment; mental health services; advocacy support for dealing with legal, financial and access to service issues; and specialized programs for the children of homeless women (including support for school success, issue-based therapy, support to enhance social inclusion, etc.)…An integrated service model that provides a continuum of care is essential to breaking the vicious cycle of homelessness within which far too many women find themselves trapped. [You Just Blink...] In order to improve the quality and relevance of services, family shelters should offer direct housing search and accompaniment services, provide follow-up for at least one year while families re-establish housing in the community, host onsite follow-up programs and create a mentorship network where mothers now back in housing support those still living in shelters. [Better Off in a Shelter?...] Opportunities for social support networking should be provided to newcomers. [Testing an Integrated…] Self-esteem and empowerment workshops should be available to newcomer women. [Testing an Integrated…] Remove Barriers to Service Awareness of and a mapping out of these barriers to homeless women are essential… the services should be easily accessible and affordable or free. It is recommended that prolonged contact with outreach workers is available to facilitate access to services and help overcome related barriers, such as mental illness. Also, adequate funding for making these services available in shelters and related centers is needed. [You Just Blink...]
Community-based agencies serving women should increase the range and type of services available, remove barriers to access and enhance the quality and accessibility of programs and services available to visible and hidden homeless women. [Common Occurrence] Expand access to financial services Financial services for low-income people are needed across the North. Mainstream financial institutions do not work for people without addresses and those with little income. People living in poverty often resort to pawn shops and payday loan companies to obtain funds in a crisis, entering into a cycle of debt that is difficult to end. Or worse, they participate in criminal activities where they are further victimized. Financial services designed to meet the needs of the poor could offer a range of tailored options to women including check cashing and micro-credit programs. This would eliminate bad debt to housing authorities and the criminalization of women, as well as endless cycles of debt. [You Just Blink...] Culturally-appropriate services Provide access to culturally appropriate services, such as shelters, safe houses and second stage housing, for all Aboriginal women and youth. [Aboriginal Women and Homelessness…] Interpretation services and resources in different languages and accessible English should be made available to newcomers. [Testing an Integrated…]
…Ongoing staff training is required, to ensure quality of skills of the staff. Apart from this, capacity needs to be built in order to ensure continuation of the service if the operating staff relocate or change occupations. [You Just Blink...] Another strategy is to ensure that health care professionals are receiving appropriate education and training in regards to the needs and issues of homeless women (Council Think Tank on the Health of Homeless and Socially Isolated Women, November, 2001). This could be achieved through the development of a comprehensive common core curriculum for all health care professionals who will be working with poor populations, a significant group of which are homeless or at risk of homelessness. This curriculum could have a focus beyond homelessness to include poverty and the interaction between poverty and gender as determinants of health. [Health Status] Ensure that gender awareness is included in local training programs for shelter workers, especially for male staff. Staff should recognize the gendered nature of trauma in the lives of many young women and adapt services to take this into account. [On Her Own] Provide mandatory sensitivity training for front-line service providers, based upon input of Service users. [Better Off in a Shelter?...] Cultural competency training should be mandatory for all agencies providing social, housing and health services. [Testing an Integrated…]
…Federal authorities … adopt an official definition of homelessness and to gather reliable statistics in order to develop a coherent and concerted approach to this issue. This should be fully inclusive of women’s, youth and children’s experiences of and responses to homelessness. [UN-ECOSOC] Coordinate a comprehensive approach to reducing homelessness by addressing both personal and structural causes; address policies and approaches that perpetuate systemic homelessness. [Aboriginal Women and Homelessness…] Ensure that all relevant stakeholders are “at the table” when public policy related to women’s homelessness is being developed and when government program decisions are being made. While a great deal of progress could be made through the formation of collaboratives as argued above, there will continue to be many other consultative processes. It is vital that voluntary sector agencies and homeless women are consistently brought to the table for these planning and decision-making processes. [You Just Blink...] Collect, manage and share information. Design and implement interagency protocols and tools for collecting, managing and sharing accurate and relevant information as well as for designing and tracking clear outcomes indicators. [You Just Blink...] Developing effective public policy and government programs, building creative solutions to address the determinants and impacts of homelessness, and creating viable partnerships between the public, private and voluntary sectors to implement those solutions cannot happen without accurate and relevant information. [You Just Blink...] Currently, information about the incidence of absolute, relative and hidden homelessness and of the number of women and their families who are in core housing need is not available. There is no comprehensive case management system that would make it possible to track the history and service use of individual women and families that are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. [You Just Blink...] Provide funding to Aboriginal women’s groups for research initiatives to address the systemic causes of women’s homelessness. [Aboriginal Women and Homelessness…] Provide funding to Aboriginal women’s groups for research initiatives to identify and address the homelessness in northern communities, among Aboriginal youth, and among Aboriginal women and youth with disabilities. [Aboriginal Women and Homelessness…]
Longitudinal studies…building on the findings of A Study of Women’s Homelessness North of 60:
Violence against women and homelessness Research on male violence against women and homelessness, for example, a longitudinal study of women’s shelter users. To what extent is women’s homelessness short term or transitional—a turbulent period followed by eventual housing stability, or part of a downward spiral to marginal housing conditions and homelessness? [No Room of Her Own] Marriage breakdown
Physical and mental healthA study of mental health services provision and women’s homelessness, including an assessment of whether there is a pattern of disintegration among mentally ill homeless women. [No Room of Her Own] A study of the health costs, in terms of both financial costs and human suffering, of homelessness. This should incorporate a gender and racial analysis and include an assessment of trans-institutional use, such as jails. [No Room of Her Own] Project evaluation & assessmentEvaluation research on existing and new alternative housing projects (for example, the Women’s Street Survivors Project for those who avoid hostels) to evaluate their effectiveness and to develop better intervention programs. Participatory research techniques should be considered to promote community-level action. [No Room of Her Own] An assessment of low cost housing models that are designed by and for women, including how they might participate in designing, developing, and managing it. [No Room of Her Own] intervention research that tracks the impact of creative pilot projects designed to reduce the incidence of women’s homelessness by working on determinants such as those identified in this current Study and to reduce the harm caused by homelessness in the lives of women and their families. [You Just Blink...] A gender analysis on services is warranted. [Testing an Integrated…] Housing conditionsThere is a real need for more research which specifically investigates and documents Aboriginal women’s housing and living conditions and which develops Aboriginal women-specific recommendations. Federal and provincial/territorial governments as well as band councils responsible for Aboriginal housing and funders must provide the necessary resources to Aboriginal women’s organizations to undertake such research. [Barriers] Rural womenAn investigation of the extent and forms of women’s homelessness in rural areas. [No Room of Her Own] 11. Public Awareness & AdvocacyEnhance public awareness and facilitate attitude change. Homeless women can suffer from discrimination and racism due to negative attitudes and stereotypical conceptions of homelessness. Public awareness can change attitudes and decrease stigmatization and discrimination that homeless women face, e.g. the common “not-in-my-backyard” opposition to shelters, public housing developments and other service centers for homeless women. [You Just Blink...] Adequate funding is needed to support activities directly focused on enhancing public awareness of homelessness and homelessness-related issues in women. These activities could include the production of tools and documents for public awareness and utilizing the available media. [You Just Blink...] Existing homelessness coalitions in the Territories could explore additional ways of providing low-income housing by participating in Canada-wide housing discussions. [You Just Blink...] Provide a centralized source of information and advocacy for persons seeking to regularize their status. [Better Off in a Shelter?...] List of reports cited
Back to TOC Directory: data -> documents data -> 1997 Atlantic Tropical Storms data -> Introduction data -> The Impact of Saharan dust aerosols on tropical cyclones using wrf-chem: Model framework and satellite data constraint technique data -> Earth-Atmosphere Interactions: Tropical Storm and Hurricane Activity in the Caribbean and Consequent Health Impacts data -> Meeting Of September 16, 2010 today’s meeting documents -> The bi-weekly torture documents -> Aaslh convention, Roger Kennedy Remarks, III, #1, p. 70 Abbot, Major Edward (photo) III, #2 documents -> Guitariste – chanteur arrangements musicaux complets documents -> Aaslh convention, Roger Kennedy Remarks, III, #1, p. 70 Abbot, Major Edward (photo) III, #2 documents -> Further Reading Heller, L. (2012) Download 166.22 Kb. Share with your friends:
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