And, complicating matters even more is the fact that there are thousands of domestic abuse cases reported each year, and at times victims find themselves coming back for help more than once, especially after returning to their abuser.
Williams says that it requires patience as human development officers try to find what works best for each client and how to safely transition them into a better life. It may take 8 tries, but she says no matter how many times they return, it does not make them less reluctant to want to help these persons.
Cynthia Williams, Human Development Coordinator, Gender Affairs Department
"This is the career that we have chosen and so it does create sometimes a bit more difficulty in identifying other strategies but we have to be there for those clients and we have to keep on trying every single time that they come and often we have to also help them look at the safety of their own children but they always strive for that family to be kept together. So no in fact whenever they come or come in again we try to identify other spaces, sometimes what works with a particular case does not necessarily work with another case and that's why every case for us has to be individually planned and it is unique and so each case has a plan in terms of what are the things that we can do with the client however it is very important to understand that whatever decisions are made in terms of what happens within a case it is not something that the social workers of the department decide on, when we work with individuals we provide information and we provide them with the options we are seeing because maybe in their emotionally state or the environment that they have had they are not able to identify and look at those options so we do that for them, we support them and in the end they have to be the ones to decide what is it that they will do."
