Inaugural Family Violence Learning Event

Despite years of tackling family violence, the rates are rising. Alberta’s rate of reported intimate partner violence has gone up by 2% since 2004 according to . Additionally, we are reportedly the third highest province for this type of family violence. The nature and extent of family violence in Canada is complex, so should measures to eliminate it. Yet collaborative attempts by Government and community agencies to change attitudes from abuse to respect through strategies such as “Family violence Hurts Everyone” since 2013, appear to have had limited success.

Immigrant and refugees on their journey of integration into Canadian society experience unique family violence risks and resolution challenges. This learning event though intended for state agency participants,its expected to be collectively beneficial to all. The learning event has the following aims:

1. Increase our awareness of family violence issues experienced by immigrant and refugee women and their families through the lens of discourse analysis.

2. Engage the practice context of state agencies to better understand how their purposes and practices in relation to family violence are discursively constituted.

3. Encourage participants to inform future actions by critically engaging their respective dominant contextual discourse(s) for more effective service delivery of family violence support services.