Southwest Crisis Services (SWCS) and the Southwest Youth Emergency Shelter (SWYES) will be teaming up to help benefit the region.

As announced at a press conference yesterday, SWCS will be starting a sexual assault unit, and will also be offering their services to men once again.

The new programs are thanks, in part, to funding from the provincial government. Funds allow for the new unit to offer one-on-one support for survivors of sexual violence, as well as support groups.

Being able to offer the program for males allows SWCS to provide a more well-rounded community outreach, as their outreach manager noted.

"Why are there males who are perpetrating violence? Are they not getting to the support they need in other areas of their life? That's where our male outreach program hopes to support," said Rebecca Donnelly.

"To prevent future violence, and to allow for that opportunity to build a relationship with males, so that if they are victims, or survivors, as we prefer to say, themselves, they can reach out to help, they're already connected to us and know that we're here for them."

"The majority of people who [abuse others] are not acting necessarily out of malice, but out of a lack of having the tools to deal with the situations," she added.

They have offered the male outreach program in the past but stopped offering it due to lack of funding.

SWCS covers a service area of 55,000 square kilometres, and the supports will be available in rural areas around their region of coverage, as well as in Swift Current.

Support from SWYES came when they offered space in their Dorie's House facility to help SWCS provide sexual assault support. This is something that Donnelly said is precisely the kind of community unity that is needed to help stamp out abuse.

"We don't want to work alone as an organization, we don't want any other organization to work alone," she said.

"It's important to have community partners, it's important to reach out and talk about what we know. That exchange of information is crucial in creating change."

 

Shaun Hanna, president of the SWYES, said that the partnership was mutually beneficial.

"It has always been part of our plan to rent out our office spaces to organizations, partially to offset costs of caring to the building, but most importantly, so that those services that would be essential to our needs would also be readily available," he said.

Sexual assault services are available through appointments made with SWCS, and are open to anyone who wishes to participate.

The funds received for the program will see training given to existing employees, but the organization will also be able to hire new members for the unit.

While the members of SWCS received the training recently, other community members sat in on the experience for free training on sexual assault support. The hope in doing so was to ensure that other active community members could also support anyone going through sexual assault issues.

Donnelly said that the response to the program was resounding.

"First, we just sort of sent out an invite saying 'do you want to send someone?' and people responded saying 'can I send two? Can I send three?,'" she explained. "So we did have to put a certain cap on it, but we're happy to say that we had two or more participants from the organizations that we invited."

SWCS is expected to be moved into Dorie's House by the end of this week.