Protocol For Supporting Survivors

It is critically important for Ontario is to ensure that all RAP centres that are providing services to the refugee community have a shared, standardised protocol in place when violence against women is suspected, witnessed and/or disclosed. This will have an important impact on the resettlement experience of that individual woman, any children she may have, and ultimately the community that she settles in.

We provide this Protocol as a way to improve and standardise organizational responses to intimate partner violence by RAP centres, and to strengthen the capacities of RAP centres in aiding female refugee survivors of violence. Responses should be uniform across RAP centres, coordinated with other institutions and service providers, and decisive. Duties and responsibilities should be clearly defined between service providers.