How a team of 5 managed a 'historic' boost to Canada's domestic violence shelters

This story is part of The Big Spend, a CBC News investigation examining the unprecedented $240 billion the federal government handed out during the first eight months of the pandemic. 

In the early weeks of COVID-19's arrival in Canada, Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich and her colleagues worked overtime trying to support front-line workers in a very different sort of pandemic. 

They were dispersing support to shelters working against what some have called the "shadow pandemic" — domestic violence affecting women isolating in their homes with an abusive partner. 

"As only five people, we were a small but mighty team," said Geiger-Bardswich, "and we could do it if we put in a bit of the extra effort."

Geiger-Bardswich is the communications lead for Women's Shelters Canada, the national network of shelters and transition houses for women and children fleeing violence in their homes. 

A week after the pandemic took hold in Canada, WSC received a call from the federal Department for Women and Gender Equality. The federal government wanted WSC to distribute $20.5 million in aid money to roughly 500 domestic violence shelters across the country. 

WSC is not normally a funding agency so the request was new territory for its staff. But the organization had the most complete list of contacts for shelters and the best relationship with shelter organizations across the country. 

"They came to us knowing that we would probably most easily get that money out as quickly as possible," said Geiger-Bardswich.

"It was the largest amount of money we'd ever received in our bank account."

A network of contacts

Working from home, WSC staff were able to connect with shelters and make sure each organization understood what it needed to do to be accountable for the money. The application process was short and didn't attach a lot of strings to how the shelters could spend the money. 

"We wanted to do it because we knew the funding was so important for shelters. It was really important to get it out quickly," said Geiger-Bardswich.

The reason for that, she said, was because WSC knew the shelters were in full crisis mode. They needed the money as early as April. 

Shelters in Quebec and those that fell under the mandate of Indigenous Services Canada also received funds, but through a different process. 

Quebec's provincial government opted to manage the distribution to its shelters rather than use the WSC process, and signed an agreement with the federal government on April 21, with funds set to flow later that month or in early May. 

On average, the Quebec shelters received their money about a month later than the ones in the WSC distribution, said Geiger-Bardswich.

Immediate needs

A survey of 266 WSC member shelters released in late November indicated almost 60 per cent of shelters reported calls went down in the first three months of the pandemic, but increased as lockdown restrictions started to lift. 

The shelters don't believe the decrease in calls happened because of less violence in the home, but rather the opposite: women were unable to call for help or leave because an abuser was present more often. Women also reported being afraid to leave their homes due to COVID-19 concerns. 

At the Beauséjour Family Crisis Resource Centre in Shediac, N.B., CEO Kristal LeBlanc said it's already hard to reach victims of domestic violence under normal circumstances, let alone during a pandemic. 

"Imagine if they're not able to leave the house and the perpetrator is there, they're making a phone call to us and hiding in their closet. So it becomes really difficult," she said. 

Sometimes during the lockdown, staff were unable to reach victims for pre-arranged virtual appointments and were left wondering what was happening. 

"We had to understand that if we had an appointment at two o'clock and that victim didn't call, something changed in that home where it was no longer safe for her to call," LeBlanc said. 

"That can be really scary for us, too, because if she was at a high risk of homicide, we had concerns that, you know, was she murdered?"

Approximately half of the shelters surveyed reported more severe attacks upon those women who did make it to the shelters. Some shelters reported increases in stabbing, strangulation and broken bones. 

Shelters also reported abusers were using "coercive control" more often during the pandemic; manipulating a victim by controlling their movements, isolating them or limiting their access to money.

Spending the money

Women's Shelters Canada handed out the money in two stages, with every shelter receiving a base amount of $32,000. Some shelters that offered long-term housing qualified for an additional $2,000 per long-term unit. 

Money left over from the first round was divided among shelters who said the initial allotment wasn't sufficient to meet their needs. In total, about 575 shelters received between $32,000 and $90,000 each, depending on their services.

"It was historic, where they had this money and needed to disperse it to all the shelters across Canada. It was a unique process," said Shiva Nourpanah, the co-ordinator of the Transition House Association of Nova Scotia. 

"We were able to do it very smoothly and efficiently, and the money did flow."

Many shelters used the money to bolster their staffing, or to find emergency housing for families who couldn't be accommodated in the regular shelters because of physical distancing.

Of those who responded to WSC's survey, 64 per cent established an isolation unit off-site at a hotel or motel. More than 80 per cent of the shelters surveyed bought new technology like tablets, phones and laptops to connect with victims. 

There is more money to come before Christmas, after the federal government announced a further $50 million for organizations that work against gender-based violence. Women's Shelters Canada is responsible for dispersing $15.7 million of that, and shelters will have until the end of September 2021 to spend the money. 

Provincial funding for some

Some provinces were quick to offer funding as well, said Nourpanah.

"It's a time of crisis and darkness, but I think people showed up for us," she said of the first wave of the pandemic in the spring. "So that was really good. Both levels of government and also individual people, and business community members." 

But as grateful as shelters are for the emergency boost in funding in the spring and the next round of federal funding to come, they have concerns about surviving without ongoing, sustainable funding. 

No shelters can hold traditional fundraising events this year. Almost 40 per cent of the shelters that answered WSC's survey reported they'd fundraised "significantly less" due to the pandemic. 

"Women who have been working in this sector for 30, 40 years, they talk about not having seen this kind of attention, for which we're very grateful," said Nourpanah. "But this sector should not have been so underfunded to start with."

LeBlanc said she feels it should be a continuing federal and provincial government response, not a one-time boost. 

"There hasn't really been that conversation around sustainability," she said. 

"At the end of the day, if charities have to start to close their doors and shut down — much like some of the private businesses — the government's going to be in a lot of trouble," she said.