Practice

Shifts due to the Pandemic

Similar to colleagues across Canada, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions (GBV service closures, social distancing, Telehealth) within the first year of WAGE projects had a significant impact on what was originally envisioned and directly impacted the closure of many community support organizations. While the original overarching project goal of the project remained the same- to support, document, and evaluate promising practices for supporting criminalized GBV survivors – it became clear very quickly that already under-serviced communities (criminalized survivors and those affected by GBV; service organizations) inequitably bore the brunt of the unintended consequences of the pandemic and lockdown restrictions, and social isolation due to shifts from in-person to virtual communications. Of further concern, these same criminalized communities saw increased risks for gender-based violence, that intersected across marginalized social identities. Further, shifts to telehealth and virtual services were also extremely inaccessible to many criminalized survivors – such as those in poverty, unhoused, street-based sex workers, and people who use drugs. As such, in partnership with WAGE and community partners, the project necessarily shifted to a decentralized model of augmenting and supporting existing supports for GBV survivors; alongside documenting and evaluating what criminalized survivors and providers identify as promising practices for GBV support across Metro Vancouver to advocate for change.