What do women and children in poverty and abusive relationship face?
by Jennifer LaFontaine
I work at Central Neighbourhood House, a community agency in the downtown east end of Toronto , which runs a program called Mothers Matter in collaboration with the Gerrard Resource Centre. Mothers Matter is a program specifically designed for women whose children are temporarily or permanently involved in the child welfare system. Mothers Matter offers workshops on develop parenting skills, life skills and how to understand the child welfare system. It also offers individual support, from going to a plan of care meeting, to helping a woman find housing. Woman abuse and children exposed to abuse is one of many problems that women who are involved in our group face. The following is one woman's story:
Maria came to me saying she wanted her boyfriend out of her life, and that he had been abusing her. The next week she was in tears, her boyfriend had followed her into the Centre, harassing her and threatening to have the Children's Aid Society take her kids. He left when she called for me from the Centre lobby. She said, ‘I'm ready, let's call the police'.
When the police came, Maria made a statement that included two incidences of physical assault, including being choked. The police said they would apprehend the boyfriend and contact her. Later that night, she was called downstairs from her friend's house and met the police and two children's aid workers. They told her that her boyfriend had not been charged and the children were apprehended because her house was unsanitary and there was little food in the fridge.
It had taken an enormous amount of courage for Maria to call the police. Now, in one moment, all of her fears were confirmed. This should not have happened. Instead, her boyfriend should have been charged. Her children should not have been taken. She should have been able to stay in her house and be supported in cleaning her apartment and getting food for her and her children's needs. She should have been validated for recognizing the need to end this abuse, and for striving for an environment where her children were not exposed to their father's violence.
While many women have joined Mothers Matter to learn parenting skills, a deeper analysis of underlying social factors shows what appear to be cases of ‘inadequate parenting' on the surface are far more complex. With social issues at play such as inadequate housing, woman abuse, and poverty, combined with the multiple barriers that women experience because of age, race, ability, sexuality, ethnicity, and so on, many women's path to re-unification with their children is not an easy one. While abuse and neglect of children can happen at any income level, “low income parents are four times more likely to feel chronically stressed than parents with higher incomes” (Ross and Roberts, 1998: 8).
In Maria's case, as a young woman who has a low income and abused by her partner, the children cannot help but be exposed to the abuse in their small apartment. Although many child welfare systems acknowledge that most of their clients are women living on low incomes, few have adequately addressed the theoretical connections between poverty, abuse, gender, and ‘inadequate parenting' (Baker, 1995). For example, it is unrealistic to demand that women should be able to meet their children's physical and emotional needs when their own are not met. Women are offered little support in the way of financial assistance and/or respite care for their children when they are experiencing temporary stress or abuse from an intimate partner (Baker, 1995).
In the USA , a group of women recently won a class action lawsuit against the Administration for Children's Services (equivalent to the child welfare service in Canada ) for violating the constitutional rights of mothers and children by removing children from mothers who are victims of domestic violence. This lawsuit provides an important precedent for moving beyond a system of blaming women for domestic abuse, towards an approach that involves women's and children's organizations working together to protect both their interests. In Mothers Matter , women are encouraged to understand their situations as fully as they can, and to recognize the changes that they need to make in their lives, as well as the systemic barriers they may encounter. Child protection must start by protecting and supporting the people who take care of the children. Only then, can we hope to have truly healthy children, women and families in all their diversity.
* Maria is a pseudonym.
Jennifer LaFontaine identifies as a young queer woman and has been working at Central Neighbourhood House for four years. She facilitates Mothers Matter and a photography program for low-income women, and is also a Wen-do Self Defence instructor. This article was written with assistance from Nadia Bellio.
References
Baker, Maureen. (1995) Canadian Family Policies: Cross-National Comparisons . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Children's Aid Society of Toronto. (2001) Annual Report 2000/01 . Toronto: Children's Aid Society of Toronto. 2001.
Family Violence Prevention Fund. (2002) New York City Lawsuit Resolved . Available from: http://endabuse.org/newsflash/index.php3?Search=Article&NewsFlashID=307 . February 12, 2002.
Ross, David P. and Paul Roberts. (1999) Income and Child Well-being: A New Perspective on the Poverty Debate . Ottawa: Canadian Council on Social Development.
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