Resources

Support Groups


Overall Purpose of Support Groups

To Break the Isolation of Immigrant and Refugee Women

In support groups women can:

To Break Myths About Violence Against Women

In support groups women can:
To Break Myths About Canadian Immigration and Family Law and the Criminal Justice System

In support groups women can:
To Validate and Draw on the Strengths and Talents of Each Woman

In support groups women can:
To Support Women in Claiming Their Power Individually and Collectively

In support groups women can:
Kinds of Support Groups

The concept of formalized, therapy-based support groups is very much a western idea. Women in many parts of the world relate to each other in women-centred groups within culture-specific functions and in the extended family. The concept of a support group is informal and not planned, institutionalized, or organized outside their neighbourhood and family.

Before refugee and immigrant women can speak openly about sexual assault and wife assault, they have to overcome the stigma of talking about personal and family matters, and especially about abuse, to strangers. In the case of abuse by a spouse, the fear of ostracism and blame from members of their ethno-specific community may prevent women from disclosing details of their abusive relationships. As one of the facilitators said, "Women will not speak up because it will affect their pride."

Refugee women who have been sexually tortured and/or sexually assaulted when they fled their country or crossed the borders to "safety", may have repressed these experiences as a coping mechanism. In some cultures the stigma attached to a woman who loses her virginity can lead to her being ostracised. This stigma, then, adds to her fear of disclosing the abuse.

I found that not all the support group models are for women who are/have been in abusive situations. Unless women are in a shelter or referred by a counsellor they are unlikely to voluntarily attend a specific group for women in an abusive situation. An African facilitator said that women would be at greater risk if their partners knew that they were attending such a group. A Spanish-speaking greater risk if their partners knew that they were attending such a group. A Spanish-speaking facilitator also said that husbands would not let their wives join a group specifically for women in abusive relationships.

To counteract objections from abusive husbands/partners, a support group model in Kitchener/Waterloo decided that they would call their group a "Cultural Group" when they were corresponding with the women. In contrast, one of the shelter facilitators said that a woman told her husband that she would return to the relationship on condition that she continue to attend the support group.

The content and process of support group sessions also vary. Some are organized as open-ended sessions with women developing the agenda from their expressed needs on the day they meet or for the entire series of sessions. Other groups have specific pre-planned themes for each session. Other groups combine the open sharing with a focused topic for the day (see Section 11.0 Selected Support Group Models).

The kind of group you decide to have will depend on a number of factors. These factors include your objectives, the resources you can get (facilitators, money, location etc.), the safety issues of group members, and above all, what the women decide once they get together.

The following are five different kinds of groups:

Open Groups

Open groups accept new members into a group at any time. The advantages are that women can experience a warm welcome from other group members. Group members can share what they learned as well as relearn when topics are repeated. Women learn to work together with changing group dynamics.

However, when there is a pre-determined schedule in an open group, the repetition can slow down the process. The group dynamics change and bonding relationships may be more difficult to maintain.

Closed Groups

Closed groups generally do not accept new members after the second or third session because group members will have established a rapport and will have decided on the focus of their sessions. A new member who has not been part of the decision making may have greater difficulty building relationships and owning the process. Safety issues also make it important not to include new members after the initial group-building sessions. It is also unfair to a group to have to hold back and repeat old discussions for a new member when the original group members have a limited number of weeks to meet their goals. The disadvantage of not welcoming new members is that participants can become too "closed" and dependent on each other.

Open and closed groups generally run for a specific number of weeks or months.

Ongoing Groups

Ongoing groups do not have specific timelines. New members are accepted and welcomed at any time. Each session is self-contained. Women will not feel the pressure to attend if they cannot make it to the group meetings. While bonding will occur among women who attend regularly, the facilitator(s) will have to pay particular attention to continuity of the content.

Second and Third Phase Groups

Some support group projects have found it necessary to have follow-up or second and third phase groups because women did not feel ready to move on their own (see Section 11.0 Selected Support Group Models: Abrigo Centre for Victims of Family Violence, Hispanic Women's Support Group Pilot Project and Mutual Support Group Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture).

Peer-Pairing Support Groups

The peer-pairing support model still needs to be tested among refugee and immigrant facilitators. One of the groups I interviewed also attempted to build a group from pairs of women (the group was not successful). It is an interesting model to explore for the smaller refugee and immigrant communities, small town and rural areas, and even in a large city like Toronto, when the particular ethno-specific community is residentially very dispersed, thus making it difficult to find an accessible place for women to meet as a group.

Criteria for pairing women need to be developed, for example, complementary needs, strengths, interests and personality, language, (possible biases or prejudices for example, racial, religious, class etc.) and especially women's needs, and where they are in the process of dealing with abuse/violence in their lives. Women must also be very clear about the matching process before their background information is revealed to the other woman. The purpose, possibilities and boundaries of the relationships must be carefully discussed.

No model is without limitations. In Talking it Out: A Guide to Groups for Abused Women (p.p. 137-135) the authors point out that there are limitations to this model of support group:

Safety is another concern with this model since women are essentially on their own. Confidentiality could also be very difficult to maintain. One of the main limitations for refugee and immigrant women is that they would not have the opportunity to learn about systemic issues that directly affect them, or how to access resource services.

A useful Canadian resource on this model is the The Peer Support Program: A Women's Volunteer Program to End Violence Against Women Information Package Community Resource Centre of Goulbourn, Kanata and West Carleton, 150 Katimavik Rd. Suite 200, Kanata, Ontario K2L 9Z9. Note, however, this model has not yet been tested for refugee and immigrant women.

Resource details:
Author: Helene Moussa.

Type/Format of Resource: Article; EWA Newsletter

Category/Topic of interest: Woman Abuse; Immigrant/Refugee Woman and Abuse

Population Group: Friends & Family; Victims / Survivors; Social Service Providers

Language of Resource: English

Year of Publication: pre 1995

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