Community Coordination for Women’s Safety Program
The Community Coordination for Women's Safety (CCWS) Program provides assistance to BC communities to develop new models or improve existing models of cross-sector coordination on violence against women.
Coordination brings together different sectors in a community—counselling centres, transition houses, police, hospitals, Aboriginal services, etc—to ensure that all services work together as effectively as possible.
Our program
- Works with urban and rural communities and women who face particular discrimination in those communities (including Aboriginal women, women of colour, immigrant women, low-income women, women with disabilities, lesbians, transgender women, older women and young women).
- Identifies barriers to women’s safety that are common to communities across the province and works with the provincial government and leaders in all sectors to reduce or eliminate those barriers.
We are guided by a provincial Working Group that includes senior personnel from government, police and community agencies. The members provide input to the CCWS Program on issues related to their fields of professional expertise and identify local and provincial strategies to enhance coordination and implementation of violence against women policies.
History
The CCWS Program is an outcome of the work of local and provincial women’s organizations, the Ministry of Community Service (now the Ministry of Housing and Social Development) and the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General (MPSSG). The program is the end result of several years of consultation and coordination by EVA BC with groups across the province seeking to improve their community response to violence against women.
The program’s development and start-up work was managed through a partnership between EVA BC and the Victim Services and Crime Prevention Division (VSCPD) of MPSSG. EVA BC is now the sole managing partner, while VSCPD continues to be an active Working Group participant. Funding for the CCWS pilot was provided by the Law Foundation of BC, the National Crime Prevention Centre, the National Victims Policy Centre of Department of Justice Canada, the Ministry of Community Services and the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General.
CCWS is currently funded by the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General.