‘Situation is desperate’ at women’s shelters: study

Quebec’s largest network of women’s shelters is in the thick of a crisis that might leave victims of domestic abuse with nowhere to turn, a new study suggests.

Last year, 10 of the network’s 33 shelters had an occupancy rate of over 100 per cent and another eight were operating at or near capacity. And while more and more women are turning to these places to flee violence, funding for shelters isn’t keeping up with demand.

“We’re hitting a ceiling, it’s that simple. The situation is desperate,” said Manon Monastesse, director general of the Fédération des maisons d’hébergement pour femmes (FMHF). “When a woman calls and we don’t have room — this year we’ve exceeded 9,000 of those calls.

“We’re worried the woman will

never call again, that she might get discouraged and not get help. We do what we can to find them another shelter and what that means is often they have to move from Montreal to a faraway region. It’s making a difficult situation even worse.”

The FMHF houses about 3,000 women a year alongside 1,500 of their children. There are 135 women’s shelters in Quebec with a capacity of roughly 2,000 people at a given moment. But a study by IRIS Research published Thursday suggests chronic underfunding from the provincial government is forcing some shelters to “turn women aside or put them on a waiting list.”

Increases in cost of living mean that funding has essentially flatlined since 2008. A shelter with a capacity of over 15 spots, for instance, spends an average of $958,000 on salaries but government funding is capped at $811,000, according to the study.

What this means is that the shelter often has to make up costs by holding fundraisers or reaching out to private donors. In the worst cases, Monastesse said, shelters are forced to consider laying off workers.

The problem is even worse for organizations that serve indigenous and immigrant women, the study says.

“There was a situation at one shelter in Maniwaki where a woman had driven all the way from the Lac Simon First Nation and the house was full,” said Monastesse. “She didn’t call, the situation was so bad that she drove there and knocked on the door in the middle of the night when it was -30C outside.

“She wasn’t turned aside, they found a way to make it work, but it shows you how desperate the situation is.”

Quebec shelters spend $5.3 million per year offering services adapted to non-francophone immigrants while IRIS calculates that an adequate level of service would actually cost over $12 million.

A part of this shortfall has to do with the percentage of immigrant women who use shelters having nearly doubled from 2007 to 2014 — it jumped from 13 per cent to 23.6 per cent in that period.

The situation at the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal is also critical. Nakuset, the shelter’s executive director, says it survives on a combination of “bare bones” provincial funding, federal grants and private donations.

“We could not get by on provincial funding alone,” said Nakuset, whose shelter houses over 23 women. “Our workers know that working here means you’re in sort of a constant crisis. You get used to it, but it’s exhausting.”

Nakuset said the shelter is involved with one fundraiser every two weeks and that her team puts in roughly 15 hours a month applying for grants.

“The philosophy is: apply, apply, apply,” Nakuset said. “Our job isn’t necessarily to hustle for money like this. We’re dealing with a population that’s in the middle of a crisis. They have stories that would break your heart and you have to be there for them, to listen, to get them the help they need and try to give them hope. That has to be the focus.”

In past interviews, Social Services Minister Lucie Charlebois said she’s sensitive to the concerns of FMHF and pointed to a $6.3-million increase in support to community organizations in the province’s 2016-17 budget.

After a similar funding crisis in 2002, the Quebec government put together an action plan that boosted annual spending on shelters by 92 per cent on average. But those increases are no longer cutting it, according to IRIS.

“What we do isn’t just give women and their children an emergency shelter,” said Monastesse. “We’re there to help them get back on their feet, to accompany them when they go to court to denounce their abuser, to help them heal the psychological wounds that come with being abused by a partner.

“That can be a long, labourintensive process but it works. Women do get back on their feet, they do start over, they do find a strength inside of themselves and there is a way out.”

We could not get by on provincial funding alone. Our workers know that working here means you’re in ... a constant crisis.