"I was worried I would never see my daughter again."
After moving to Canada from Iran, Tala's husband became very controlling. "He wouldn’t allow me to see my family, have friends or get a job," she says. As time passed, he became more abusive and, during one of his outbursts, broke her arm.
Both Tala and her husband were pharmacists in their home country, but "our licenses were not recognized here in Canada." Her husband became very critical of Canadian society and wanted to return to Iran but Tala refused to go back. One day, he announced that he was taking their daughter to Canada’s Wonderland. Instead, he abducted her to Tehran. Tala contacted the media in an attempt to get her daughter back. One of FSA Toronto’s Farsi-speaking counsellors in the Violence Against Women unit saw the story on the news. She located Tala and worked with her and the Canadian and Iranian governments to get Tala’s daughter back.
"I was so worried that I would never see [my daughter] again," says Tala. "I also thought my husband’s family would hurt me," so FSA Toronto’s VAW counsellor helped her develop a safety plan. Following months of negotiation, Tala’s husband returned their daughter to Canada after receiving assurances that he would not be charged.
Her counsellor at FSA Toronto made arrangements to get her into a new home out of the community and in another city. She accompanied Tala to the airport to pick up her daughter and then escorted them to a safe shelter. "She helped me find a school program for me to go back to work as a pharmacist again," says Tala. Today, she is a practicing pharmacist and living in safety with her daughter.
Assessing our Impact
Prologue: In early 2006, FSA Toronto began efforts to measure the impact of our counselling work. We issued a standardized assessment survey to clients entering our Counselling Service, Sexual Assault Initiative and David Kelley Services (DKS) programs and planned to conduct follow-up surveys at every fourth session to determine the success and effectiveness of these counselling programs.
To date, 526 clients have participated in the outcomes survey – 304 from the Counselling Service, 197 from DKS and 25 from the Sexual Assault Initiative. Of these clients, more than two-thirds (64%) registered in the clinical range for distress when they came to FSA Toronto. Time two surveys (T2) showed a decrease in that number to 54% of clients.
On average, clients participating in the survey attended a total of four sessions at the agency. The average number of sessions for clients who scored in the clinical range for distress at their initial visit (T1) is five while the average number of sessions for clients who did not score in the clinical range is four. This suggests that clients who are experiencing higher levels of distress are seen for longer than those who are experiencing lower levels of distress.
For the Counselling Service, the severity of symptoms from T1 to T2 decreased across all scales measured (symptom distress, interpersonal relations and social role). The mean scores for the symptom distress and social role dropped into the non-clinical range and the clients’ overall score fell just short of the clinical cut-off. For David Kelley Services, scores dropped on all scales, except for interpersonal relations, which remained unchanged from T1 to T2. The score for social role dropped from the clinical range to the non-clinical range.
An important caveat to these results is an inconsistency in the administration of the surveys to the planned schedule of every fourth visit. Several clients were overdue for T2 surveys when we analyzed the data. The length of the 45-question survey and a lack of reminders for counselling staff to administer it may contribute to this problem.
Epilogue: To collect more robust, accurate data on our counselling outcomes, we plan to pilot a set of shorter surveys that will be available in a number of languages and can be conducted orally for clients who have difficulty reading. A reminder notice feature will soon be launched on our client records database to encourage the timely administration of surveys.
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