Performance Reporting

Core Business Area: Women's Issues

Goal: Women's unique social and economic needs are addressed

The ministry provides services to women through the provision of policy analysis and advice to executive, the ministers and Cabinet; through supporting the provincial inventory of transition houses; and by making counselling available for women who have experienced abuse and for children who have witnessed abuse.

Violence against women remains a largely hidden problem in our society, exacting a high economic toll and causing serious health and societal problems. Violence witnessed by children can also have long lasting negative effects. A reported 10 per cent of British Columbia women have experienced spousal violence in the past five years. This is the third highest rate of spousal violence among Canadian provinces (Canada 1999 General Social Survey).

Addressing women's unique needs contributes to the ministry's mission and vision for individuals and communities.

Objectives and Strategies

Objective 1: Women experiencing abuse receive emergency shelter and counselling.

Key Strategies Undertaken:

• In 2003/04, $26.8 million in funding was provided for transition houses (including second-stage housing, safe homes, outreach services, and multicultural services).
• $8.25 million in funding in 2003/04 was provided for counselling services for 22,816 abused women and for 8,841 children who witnessed abuse.
• Recommendations for a new funding model for the provincial inventory of transition houses were developed.

Explanation of Variance:

This program/service is demand driven. The target was based on the assumption that the demand for service will be consistent with past years. The target is based on a three-year average.

In 2003/04, the ministry developed a new funding model for transition houses to increase equity in its contracts. The ministry also administered contracts for counselling services and provided one-time funding of $779,500 for capital improvements for 54 transition houses.

The province's network of 61 transition houses is complemented by nine second-stage houses for those moving on from transition houses, and 16 safe homes, which provide shelter to women and their children leaving abusive relationships in smaller communities.

Transition houses provide short-term, emergency respite from violence. Accordingly, the ministry is unable to track the longer term outcomes for their clients. The number of women receiving this service in 2003/04 was up slightly from the three-year average but is not considered to fall outside of year-to-year variation.

Objective 2: Government is enabled to make informed decisions on issues that affect women.

Key Strategies Undertaken:

• Key elements of the Safer Community Strategy for Women were implemented.
• An online Women's Services Directory was completed.

The ministry continued to work to provide expert policy analysis and advice to the Minister of State for Women's Equality and the Minister of State for Women's and Seniors' Services, and to serve as a resource to other government ministries and the public. The Minister of State was supported in her participation in the federal/provincial/territorial Status of Women Ministers' forum. One result was the production of "Workplaces that Work", a toolkit for employers to increase participation of women in the workplace. The ministry also worked with partner ministries to implement key elements of the Safer Community Strategy for Women. This included the Healthy and Respectful Relationships initiative which will benefit women and communities by developing and delivering workshops, training and other prevention resources for secondary school students to increase their awareness and understanding of issues related to violence against women.