“Our services are not the same” : the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on care interactions in women’s shelters
department or school: Applied Science, Faculty of
department or school: Non UBC
department or school: Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of
data provider: DSpace
identifier citation: BMC Women's Health. 2023 Aug 11;23(1):427
rights copyright: BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature
creator: Burd, Caitlin
creator: McLean, Isobel
creator: MacGregor, Jennifer C. D.
creator: Mantler, Tara
creator: Veenendaal, Jill
creator: Wathen, C. N.
issued: 2024-11-27T23:33:39Z
issued: 2023-08-11
description: Background: Guidelines and regulations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have significantly impacted the health care sector. We explore these impacts in the gender-based violence (GBV) services sector and, more specifically, in the context of women’s shelters. Methods: Using an interpretive description and integrated knowledge mobilization approach, we interviewed 8 women’s shelter clients, 26 staff, and conducted focus groups with 24 Executive Directors. Results: We found that pandemic responses challenged longstanding values that guide work in women’s shelters, specifically feminist and anti-oppressive practices. Physical distancing, masking, and closure of communal spaces intended to slow or stop the spread of the novel coronavirus created barriers to the provision of care, made it difficult to maintain or create positive connections with and among women and children, and re-traumatized some women and children. Despite these challenges, staff and leaders were creative in their attempts to provide quality care, though these efforts, including workarounds, were not without their own challenges. Conclusions: This research highlights the need to tailor crisis response to sector-specific realities that support service values and standards of care.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/89741
note: R E S E A R C H Open Access© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.Burd et al. BMC Women's Health (2023) 23:427 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02541-7BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted every-day life across all social contexts and work sectors, especially the health and social service sector. However, vulnerable groups, including women experiencing vio-lence, have been disproportionately affected [1]. Gender-based violence (GBV) is a major public health issue and human rights violation with estimates that 65% of women are exposed, either directly or indirectly, to at least one form of GBV in their lifetime [2]. Evidence demonstrates that survivors suffer a range of negative health impacts as a result of experiencing violence [3, 4]. Experiences of BMC Women's Health*Correspondence:Caitlin Burdcburd@uwo.ca1Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Western University, 1151 Richmond St, N6A 5B7 London, ON, Canada2School of …
has type: Article
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0447346
language: eng
peer review status: Reviewed
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: BioMed Central
publisher DOI: 10.1186/s12905-023-02541-7
rights: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
scholar level: Faculty
scholar level: Researcher
scholar level: Graduate
subject: COVID-19 pandemic
subject: Women’s shelters
subject: Gender-based violence
subject: Intimate partner violence
subject: Service delivery
subject: Public health
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89741