Community Programs: Preventing Crime Through Social Development
“...how much or how little assistance, advice and advocacy a woman receives can determine whether she will integrate in a functional or dysfunctional way with her environment.”—Creating Choices: The Report of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women, Correctional Service Canada, April 1990
Root causes of crime include poverty, neglect, physical and sexual abuse, racial discrimination, family breakdown, limited education, unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction. Our specialized Community Counselling Programs include Parenting, Drug and Alcohol, Partner Intervention, Shoplifting and Fraud Prevention, Sexual Abuse.
Community Programs
Drug and Alcohol Program
- Offers women the opportunity to explore and work with issues related to past or present substance use. The program provides individual counselling, as well as harm reduction and relapse prevention groups.
- Individual counselling helps women look at issues that prompt their drug/alcohol use and together with their counsellor explore various treatment options.
- The Group programs run in eight week cycles within a holistic framework encompassing the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual components of addiction and recovery.
- Approximately six groups are run each year. Each group consists of 6-10 women. Women are referred through the courts, community agencies, hospitals and self-referral.
Partner Intervention Program
A group program provided for women who are charged in domestic violence situations.
- A 16 week program consisting of two individual assessment interviews, 12 weeks of closed group, and two individual exit interviews. This mutual aid group provides women emotional support and practical assistance with issues regarding domestic violence and healthy relationships.
- Approximately six groups are run each year with an average of eight women per group.
- Women are referred from the domestic violence court system and probation officers.
Shoplifting and Fraud
A program for women with recent experience of shoplifting and/or fraud.
- The program consists of 10 week cycles with initial assessment. Provides individual and group counselling for women to address shoplifting and fraud behaviours, coping mechanisms, relapse prevention, life skills, isolation and shame.
- Individual counselling and support provided on a limited basis upon the availability of the program worker.
- Women can self-refer or be recommended to the program by lawyers, probation officers or mental health care workers.
- Approximately three groups are run each year with an average of nine women per group.
Healing From Abuse Program
A program for women re entering the community after incarceration, women on probation and women in the community who are at risk of conflict with the law. Individual counselling is provided on a limited basis. A Sexual Abuse group is also offered. When numbers permit, a Cult Abuse Support Group is offered for women who have experienced sexual violence in the context of child prostitution and child pornography as well as in cults.
The program offers:
- An opportunity to speak about past experiences that have left confusion and difficult feelings that interfere with reaching present day goals.
- Support to understand the impact of abuse and to develop positive coping strategies.
- Group work for mutual support, to gain insight, and to celebrate changes.
- Approximately three groups are offered each year averaging 6-8 women per group.
Parenting Program
The Mothers Who Care parenting program is a culturally diverse program offered to women in the community and to women who are incarcerated at the Vanier Centre for Women in the Maplehurst Correctional Institute in Milton.
- The Community Parenting Program is held weekly at the Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto and includes both individual and group counselling and accommodates up to 10 women in each group.
- Referrals to the program come from the Children's Aid Society, probation officers, and self-referral.
- The program at the Vanier Centre for Women includes a weekly drop-in program and an 8 week cycle group.
Separating from her children is one of the biggest difficulties a woman must face when she is imprisoned. The parenting program helps women rebuild their relationships with their children and learn practical parenting skills.