"Creating a Framework for the Wisdom of the Community:" Review of Victim Services in Nunavut, Northwest and Yukon Territories

2.0 Nunavut (cont'd)

• 2.3 Formal Services Available in Nunavut Communities

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2.0 Nunavut (cont'd)

2.3 Formal Services Available in Nunavut Communities

2.3.1 Scope and Methodology

At the outset of this research, and as described earlier, a decision was made to include the widest possible range of human service providers in the inventory of services to victims of crime. Since there are few victim-dedicated services and a large number of residents who have been victims of crime, it is reasonable to assume that all human service providers in Nunavut are assisting victims of crime in one capacity or another. Therefore, the decision was made to contact the following services in each Nunavut community: schools, Friendship Centres, health centres, churches, addictions programs, Wellness Centres, women’s shelters, child and family program centres, and counselling centres. These services are not universal in Nunavut, and, in fact, most communities have very limited human services, let alone services with a specific mandate to assist victims of crime. Those services that are universal, such as the RCMP, were contacted through their head office in Iqaluit, Nunavut.^[21]

There are three regions with a total of twenty-eight communities in Nunavut. The inventory of services was organized along these lines. It was divided according to the three regions, namely Qikiqtaaluk (formerly Baffin), Kitikmeot, and Kivalliq (formerly Keewatin). A total of 148 individual community-based service providers and an additional seven universal service providers were identified for contact across all 28 communities.

The inventory was completed through on-site, in-person interviews in Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit, and a telephone survey conducted from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.^[22] Phone numbers were acquired through the Nunavut Government Department of Justice, the phone book and by word of mouth from service providers in the same community or region.

There were 91 completed questionnaires from the identified 148 individual community-based service providers. All seven universal service providers completed a questionnaire. The remaining 57 non-respondent community-based services were phoned up to five separate times but either did not answer, had a recently disconnected phone line and/or discontinued service or explained that they did not offer services to victims. Services, which had discontinued their program with the intention of restarting it, were included in the inventory.

2.3.2 Inventory Findings

Most service providers were interested in participating in the inventory of services and contributed recommendations for victim services as well as data about their own service. The 91 community−based, and seven centrally run universal service providers, fall into eighteen categories. The universal service providers are:

• Crown Attorney Victim/Witness Assistants (there are three Assistants who travel to all Nunavut communities);
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police (in each community);
• the Qikiqtaaluk Crisis Line;
• "Crimestoppers";
• Nunavut Department of Health and Social Services, Community Social Programs (located in each community);
• Municipal Hamlet Councils (in each community); and
• Nunavut Arctic College, with thirteen Community Learning Centres.

The community-based service providers included:

• 2 legal aid services;
• 6 women’s shelters;
• 2 Friendship Centres;
• 6 elders facilities;
• 3 healing groups;
• 3 residential facilities;
• 6 addiction programs;
• 32 separate family, youth and wellness programs (these are all sponsored by the above-mentioned centrally-run Nunavut Department of Health and Social Services, Community Social Programs);
• 25 health centres (again, these are all part of the above-mentioned centrally-run Nunavut Department of Health and Social Services, Community Social Programs);
• 32 schools; and
• 23 churches.

Each of these categories is discussed below. A full description of respondents’ assessments of the victim services and victimization situation in their community is provided in the next part of this section, namely, "Obstacles Faced by Nunavut Service Providers." Their recommendations for improved services for victims are contained in the section, "Recommendations for Victim Services in Nunavut."^[23]

The universal services available to victims of crime that exist throughout Nunavut were contacted through their head office in Iqaluit. As listed above, these universal services include: RCMP; municipal Hamlet Councils; ^[24] Nunavut Government Department of Health and Social Services (individual Health Centres are described by community); Nunavut Arctic College Community Learning Centres (present in 13 communities); and two toll-free lines, "Crimestoppers" and "Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin) Crisis Line," which are accessible in every community. In addition, the Department of Justice Canada, Nunavut Region Crown Attorney’s Office, has a Victim/Witness Assistance program through their office in Iqaluit. There are three staff with this program who travel with the circuit court throughout Nunavut. A summary of these universal services is given below.

• Department of Justice Canada Crown Attorney Victim/Witness Assistance Program
  There are currently three Victim/Witness assistants working at the Crown Attorney’s Office in Iqaluit. These workers travel with the court circuit throughout Nunavut. They assist victims through the court process by explaining the criminal justice and court processes to them, and by assisting them in their role as witnesses to crime. They help victims prepare Victim Impact Statements. They also offer emotional and logistical assistance to both children and adults, often travelling ahead of the court party to work with these victims. They have at their disposal a number of audio and visual aids for use with victims and witnesses.
  
  In responding to this survey these workers report that there is a need for increased community support and services for victims, and greater public awareness about the rights and needs of victims. In addition, their own needs in terms of explaining the court process and assisting victims in their role as witnesses would be met by the availability of audio and visual aids in Inuktitut (the language of approximately 85% of Nunavut residents). Their heavy travel and interview schedule might also point to the need for increased staffing in this area of victim services.
  
  
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
  The RCMP offers standard policing services in all Nunavut communities. They also cooperate with local Community Justice Committees (where they exist) in community justice initiatives such as restorative justice, offender diversion programs, alternate sentencing and community policing. RCMP members refer victims to victim services, safe shelters and other resources where these are available. They also provide access to, and assistance with, Victim Impact Statements.
  
  The respondent from the RCMP Community Policing Section stated that more victim services, with long-term funding, were necessary and added that those helping victims needed more support to prevent burnout. He also stated that the RCMP would benefit from increased training around methods of supporting victims. In addition he remarked that there needed to be more public awareness around the prevention of violence and public agreement that the behaviour of offenders is not acceptable.
  
  
• Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin) Crisis Line
  This crisis line is available to all Nunavut and Nunavik (northern Quebec) communities from seven in the evening to midnight every night of the year. It has been running for 11 years. It is listed in each community under both "Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin) Crisis Line" and "Crisis Line." The phone lines are staffed by approximately 50 volunteers in Iqaluit and service is offered in French, English and Inuktitut on most nights.
  
  The respondent reports that calls are related to suicide, spousal assault and past abuse, among other issues. They receive approximately 1,000 calls a year. All calls are confidential and anonymous. The Crisis Line works in cooperation with Northwestel and the RCMP in terms of immediate crisis and suicide intervention, although they do not use call-display phones, and they advertise this fact.
  
  Volunteer crisis line workers are trained in the areas of suicide intervention, spousal and sexual assault, addictions, trauma, grief and referral protocol. Funding for phone lines, office space, training and advertising are raised through volunteer fundraising efforts.
  
  
• "Crimestoppers"
  This program is overseen by a volunteer community-based board of directors which the RCMP coordinates from its northern headquarters in the Yellowknife, Northwest Territories office. A toll-free number is available in each Nunavut (and NWT) community for people to anonymously report information relating to criminal activity. Calls are answered in person 24 hours a day by paid staff trained to ask questions related to criminal activity. Callers are given a code number and can phone collect to the RCMP member in Yellowknife to report further details of the crime and potentially collect a reward if the information leads to an arrest. The respondent notes that victims seldom phone this line looking for help, nor is it used by people anonymously reporting spousal abuse, sexual assault and child abuse crimes. The majority of calls relate to drug dealing, bootlegging, arson, theft and fraud. They receive 200 to 250 calls per year.
  
  
• Nunavut Government: Department of Health and Social Services, Community Social Programs
  The Nunavut Government Department of Health and Social Services, Community Social Programs, is mandated to offer services in each Nunavut community in the areas of child welfare, adoption, community corrections, aged and handicapped, mental health, spousal assault and spousal relocation. In some Kitikmeot communities, the Social Services office and Health Services (nursing station) are combined in the same building. In other locations they are in separate buildings.
  
  Social Service offices provide help to victims of crime, as time allows, through participation with other community agencies in the sponsorship of community-based counselling, addictions, crisis intervention and healing programs. In addition, where there is little or no support to victims, Social Service workers assist the victim with court procedures, referrals and emotional support. In some communities, Social Services workers also work with children in the school system and with teachers.
  
  According to the respondent, Community Social Workers carry a very heavy load and would benefit from the availability of other local community-based services in a position to focus on victims of crime. They see a strong need to hire and train community people who could both assist victims and work with the overall community in crime prevention.
  
  
• Municipal Hamlet Councils
  Hamlet Councils, the municipal government body in each Nunavut community, do not directly offer any social services. They do, however, often sponsor Community Justice Committees, Recreation Committees and Community Wellness Committees. In that capacity, they help secure funding and offer administrative support to the programs run by these committees.
  
  
• Nunavut Arctic College, Community Learning Centres
  Community Learning Centres are located in 13 Nunavut communities as follows: Arviat, Baker Lake, Cambridge Bay, Chesterfield Inlet, Coral Harbour, Gjoa Haven, Igloolik, Iqaluit, Kugluktuk, Rankin Inlet, Repulse Bay, Taloyoak and Whale Cove. These centres have an adult educator, and sometimes additional staff, who offer educational programs to adults in academic upgrading and a variety of employment skill areas. These learning centres are not specifically offering a victim service. However, they do provide locally available, long-term, safe, training programs available to the general public, many of whom are chronically traumatized and recovering victims of crime.
  
  In addition, in terms of victim services, Nunavut Arctic College offers a two-year diploma program in Social Work and a one-year certificate program in Northern Alcohol and Drug Counselling. These programs are coordinated from the Nunavut Arctic College Kitikmeot Campus in Cambridge Bay.
  
  The following services are categorized as community-based services because their service is available only to the people in the community where they are located. Some, such as women’s shelters, will take victims from a nearby community if they have space, and if the victim can acquire a referral and airfare from their local social worker.
  
  
• Women’s Shelters
  Of the 26 Nunavut communities, six have safe shelters for women. These shelters are in Iqaluit, Cape Dorset, Rankin Inlet, Taloyoak, Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk. They accommodate women, and their children, escaping violent situations in their homes. Most shelters can house women and children for up to a week, although the shelter in Iqaluit can accommodate women and children for up to six weeks or longer. All the shelters except the one in Iqaluit operate with part-time on-call staff. Finding capable, long-term, trained staff, and lack of funding, are problems they share with other service providers in Nunavut.
  
  These shelters are well connected to each other as they hold annual meetings and ongoing consultations through their parent organization, Sedna, NWT/Nunavut Family Violence Prevention Workers Association. They attempt to do joint staff training and share resources amongst themselves. Aside from the Crown Victim/Witness Assistance Program working out of Iqaluit and the Victim Assistance Program at the Rankin Inlet Friendship Centre, these shelters are the only services in Nunavut dedicated to victim services.
  
  Like other community-based service providers they understand the realities of victimization in the communities they serve, and in Nunavut Territory in general. They work with local social service offices in their communities to transfer women and children to other shelters if they remain in danger in their own community. They do as much public education, advocacy and hosting of community training and healing events as their funding and staffing situations allow.
  
  
• Friendship Centres
  There is a Friendship Centre in two Nunavut communities. The Friendship Centre in Rankin Inlet sponsors a variety of programming, including a Victim Assistance Program. This program has one staff person and is available to victims of crime in Rankin Inlet needing referral, counselling, advocacy and assistance with court proceedings. As funding becomes available, this Friendship Centre also sponsors early intervention, youth and family programs. They are also hoping to sponsor a treatment program for abusive men in the future. The second Friendship Centre, in Arctic Bay, is temporarily suspended, although an interview was completed with the remaining staff.
  
  
• Elders Facilities
  Six elders facilities were identified and contacted. These service providers do not identify themselves as offering services to victims, although most participated in the survey. They provide both residential and day programming to elderly people.
  
  
• Healing Groups
  A search of the Nunavut phone directory and word of mouth information revealed that three communities, namely, Pangnirtung, Clyde River and Cape Dorset, have informal healing groups for men and women. However, it was only possible to talk with one of these programs as no answer was received at the other numbers. Community volunteers, usually under the sponsorship of a community agency or hamlet committee, run these programs. According to other sources these healing groups offer both on-going and time-limited group sessions. Some healing groups take an Alcoholics Anonymous approach and others hold talking circles in an effort to help people disclose and heal from past traumas.
  
  
• Residential Facilities
  One residential child group home, one homeless shelter and one offender rehabilitation facility (half-way house), all in Iqaluit, were identified and contacted. All completed an interview. As with all service providers these facilities understood the situation with regard to victimization in Nunavut. However, they do not identify themselves as offering services specifically to victims. Like other service providers, they report that the reality of victimization in Nunavut is much greater than their service and other existing services can adequately address.
  
  
• Addictions Programs
  A total of six stand-alone addictions programs were identified for contact. Responses were received from five of them. The remaining program was temporarily suspended. As noted above, some addictions programming is done through wellness centres and family counselling centres. However, a few communities still try to maintain separate addictions treatment programs. These programs know they are working with victimized people but their primary mandate is to address the addictions issues of the community. Addictions programs usually have only one or two staff. Moreover, due to low wages and lack of core funding, staff turnover is high
  .
  
• Legal Services
  Two legal aid services were identified. A partial response was obtained from both of these services. They explained that they do not offer services to victims of crime.
  
  
• Justice Committees
  Each community has its own Community Justice Committee. Five of these were contacted. As with other service providers, they do not identify themselves as offering services to victims of crime as their focus has been on offender sentencing and rehabilitation. However, they expressed an interest in becoming more informed about victim issues and would like to offer more assistance in that area.
  
  
• Family, Youth and Wellness Programs
  A total of thirty-two separate programs, which offer a variety of family, youth and wellness programming, were identified in Nunavut. These programs include:
  
  • prenatal health programs such as Aboriginal HeadStart (Health Canada), daycare and other early intervention programs;
  • youth programs which offer various land skills, cultural and recreational programming (eight programs were identified, although five could not be contacted due to disconnected phone lines, suspension of their program or no phone access);
  • family counselling programs (13 were identified, although four are currently suspended due to funding issues); and
  • wellness programs, with between 1 and 5 staff each, offer a wide variety of health programming, including healing groups and addictions counselling (12 wellness programs were identified, although 4 could not be reached for comment).
    
  It is important to note that most of these programs are clustered, for unknown reasons, in a few communities. Baker Lake has the most services of this type for a small community. Iqaluit has the most services of this type for a large community. As well, Cambridge Bay, Clyde River, Cape Dorset and Kugluktuk seem to have more of this type of programming than other small towns.
  
  These programs do not offer services dedicated specifically to victims, although much of their clientele are victimized individuals and families. Respondents are well aware of the victimization issues in their community and know that their programs are most often the only community resource for victims.
  
  Some communities have had more success than others in holding onto this type of community-based programming. The reasons for this are unknown. However, the overriding problem expressed by all respondents in this category is the difficulty of maintaining funding that comes only on a year-to-year basis. A further challenge is finding enough capable staff willing to work at wages that are much lower than those in government.
  
  
• Health Centres
  Health is a universal service in Nunavut. Each community has a health centre, or "nursing station," as it is sometimes referred to, as nurses staff the health centre, with doctors flying in periodically. A decision was made to contact each centre individually as community-based nurses usually know the victimization situation in their community in more detail than most other service providers. A total of twenty-five health centres were contacted; however, four of these did not wish to complete the interview. In one instance this was due to a language issue (no one was available to do the survey in English) and in the other instances the respondents expressed frustration with surveys and questionnaires that never seem to lead to increased programming or services.
  
  Health centres do not offer victim services outside of referrals to social services in cases of suspected or known abuse, and some counselling when they have time. Respondents explained that they are very overworked and do not have enough time for their medical duties, let alone counselling.
  
  
• Schools
  A total of thirty-two schools were identified for contact. A response was received from all of these schools. Most schools in Nunavut have a school counsellor who is also available for some community counselling work as time permits. The schools in Nunavut are aware of the high levels of victimization in the general population but are not able to offer any dedicated victim service programs outside of the assistance they attempt to give individual students, and their parents, who approach them directly. However, a number have curricula that include discussions of interpersonal violence and most attempt to involve elders and other respected community members in their day-to-day programming.
  
  
• Churches
  A total of twenty-three churches were identified. However, despite numerous attempts, no response was received from thirteen of these churches. The ten churches that did respond explained that they offer volunteer counselling services for their parishioners and other community members who approach them. Some of these churches periodically offer shelter and programs for youth, and indigent community members, if they can find the necessary volunteer staff and resources.

In summary, in terms of service inventory findings, and as noted above, there is currently only one service in Nunavut actually called a "Victims Assistance Program". It is sponsored by the Friendship Centre in Rankin Inlet. There was a second victim assistance program offered in the past through the Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin) Regional Aggvik Society in Iqaluit, which also sponsors the women’s shelter in Iqaluit. This victim services program is indefinitely suspended due to funding difficulties. Aside from the six women’s shelters in Nunavut, and the Crown-based Victim Witness Assistance program associated with the court circuit, there are no other services in Nunavut whose sole mandate is assistance to victims of crime.^[25]

As stated earlier, most human service providers in Nunavut are well aware of the fact that they are providing services to victimized people, and this realization is born out by their comments during interviews. It is important to note here that the overall tone expressed by respondents throughout the entire survey process was one of stress, sadness, intense frustration and even anger at what they describe as an almost complete lack of safety and recovery programs for victimized individuals. The mandate of some services may include services to victims, but due to funding shortfalls, staff burn-out and turnover, the lack of trained staff, community attitudes, and other obstacles detailed in the next section, the majority of human service providers in Nunavut find themselves unable to offer anything more than what they themselves describe as "band-aid solutions" to a problem they describe as "monumental."

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• [21] The detailed results of this inventory of services can be found in Victim Services in the Territories: A Compilation of Contacts and Resources, Mary Beth Levan, Ottawa: Policy Centre for Victim Issues and Research and Statistics Division, Department of Justice Canada, 2002.
• [22] The territory now known as Nunavut formed part of the Northwest Territories, with Yellowknife as the capital city, until division into two separate territories in April 1999.
• [23] Thus, there is an important caveat. The inventory findings discussed in this section, 2.3.3, are to be read as descriptions of program mandates rather than as descriptions of how these services are working in vivo, i.e., as lived front-line experience. They must be read in conjunction with, and in the context of section 2.3.4, "Obstacles faced by Nunavut Service Providers."
• [24] Hamlet offices, present in each community, do not offer direct service delivery programs. They may sponsor or fund various local committees, but they do not offer programs themselves.
• [25] A Community Justice Specialist/Victims Assistance Coordinator position was created by the Nunavut Department of Justice after the data gathering phase of this research project was completed.

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