Understanding and Responding to Woman Abuse in Immigrant and Refugee Communities: eLearning for Settlement Workers - Announcement and Invitation to Participate
August 05, 2009
OCASI is pleased to announce the Understanding and Responding to Woman Abuse in Immigrant and Refugee Communities: eLearning for Settlement Workers project.
In this project, OCASI has adapted two existing Online Self-Directed Learning Workshops: Prevention of Domestic Violence against Immigrant and Refugee Women: Prevention through Intervention andFamily Violence against Immigrant and Refugee Women: Community Development Strategies.
Main target audience: This course is for service providers in Ontario who work with immigrant and refugee women on a regular basis, but who do not have the training or extensive knowledge of woman abuse issues.
This is an online learning course. There is no face-to-face component. All course work will be done on the internet.
Cost: There is no cost for this training.
Eligibility: There is no specific funding eligibility to be able to take this course. Our focus is providing the course to service providers who work with immigrant and refugee women on a regular basis, but who do not have the training or extensive knowledge of woman abuse issues.
Please read the background information about the course. Registration dates, with links to online registration forms are below.
Course Description
Service providers in the settlement sector are often the first formal point of contact for immigrant and refugee women experiencing violence and abuse. Given this reality, it is imperative that service providers enhance their understanding of woman abuse, including assessment and referral skills. In addition, understanding how to educate, organize and mobilize communities to end violence against women is essential to ensure sustainable and meaningful change.
While woman abuse crosses all social identities, it is necessary to understand the unique systemic barriers impacting immigrant and refugee communities to both ensure appropriate responses and prevent a ‘one-size fits all’ approach. Viewing our responses along a continuum of direct support to community development will help promote a coordinated and comprehensive response to violence against women.
This online course provides practitioners and students in the settlement sector with an introductory knowledge base and skill-set required to:
- Critically understand the systemic barriers impacting immigrant and refugee women experiencing abuse
- Appropriately assess and refer immigrant and refugee women experiencing abuse
- Organize communities to prevent and address violence against immigrant and refugee women
Through five interactive modules, learners will participate in a range of methods to increase knowledge, stimulate thinking, and engage in practical skill-building activities.
Note: This is an introductory level course. It is not designed for those with extensive knowledge and experience of violence against immigrant and refugee women issues.
As part of this project, OCASI is also developing an Ontario-wide online community practice made up of service providers and practitioners, including violence against women practitioners that work with immigrants and refugees. The purpose of this online network, which will also be inclusive of students and volunteers, is to create a facilitated space to share resources, issues, learnings and best practices related to violence against immigrant and refugee women in Ontario.
Cost: There is no cost for this training.
Your Time Commitment
Participation
This will be a facilitated and graded course, based on participation and learning activities. Because of the online nature of the course, active participation is required to ensure individual and collective learning.
You should expect to spend at least 3-4 hours per week on this course.
Organization Permission/Sign-Off
As with any professional development course, you will likely be using some personal time to focus on the course.
However, this course is part of your professional development as a worker in the sector. Some of the interactive activities will be scheduled during regular work hours. We strongly encourage you to get manager/supervisor sign-off to take this course and use at least one or two hours per week to engage with the course facilitator and other participants.
For example, a facilitated online text-based chat will take place every Tuesday 10:00a.m. to 11:00 a.m. during the course.
Course Overview: Five Interactive Modules
OCASI will offer this course five times. It is the same course each time, with a new group of participants.
Each time the course is offered, it will last 5 weeks, consisting of one module per week. The training will be made available to a total of 150 participants (with 30 participants in each workshop). The course participants will form the core of the future online Community of Practice.
Guest Experts
Each module will include the participation of an expert in the field who will be available to answer questions, engage in learning activities and be a support to you during the course.
Modes of Instruction
The following online modes of instruction will be used to encourage you to obtain a range of diverse learning outcomes: course material, learning activities, suggested readings, discussion board, chat room, and email with facilitator and course peers.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course, you will have achieved the following learning outcomes:
Module 1: Introduction to Violence against Immigrant and Refugee Women
- Analyze terms commonly used to describe woman abuse
- Understand the various forms woman abuse can take as rooted in power
- Understand the ways in which woman abuse impacts women, children, men, and society
- Recognize the barriers women experience to achieving safety through the concept of ‘social risks’
Module 2: Roles of the Service Provider: Ensuring an Early Response
- Understand the importance of providing an early response to women experiencing abuse
- Gain concrete assessment skills when working with women who may be experiencing abuse
- Understand how to deal with disclosures from women experiencing abuse
- Understand the concept of ‘high risk’ and associated tools
- Understand the importance of professional boundaries in order to make a referral
- Gain concrete skills to make a facilitated referral
Module 3: Roles of the Service Provider: Understanding Systemic Responses to Violence against Women
- Develop basic understanding of criminal court response to violence against women and impacts this can have on women/children
- Develop basic understanding of immigration policy and implications for working with women who have experienced abuse
- Gain resources to learn about other systemic responses including: child welfare, family law, shelters, and housing
Module 4: Understanding Community Development
- Learn definitions of community and community development
- Understand values that guide community development
- Understand process of community development along a continuum of methods
- Understand importance of using community development to prevent and address woman abuse
Module 5: Applying Community Development to Violence against Immigrant & Refugee Women Issues
- Gain overview of community development methods through application to case studies
- Apply relevance of community development methods to woman abuse in immigrant and refugee communities
- Gain information on how to assess community’s capacity to move forward with community change
A certificate of completion will be given to participants who complete the pre- and post training evaluation and successfully complete all the five Modules.
Technical Requirements
If you can watch and hear a YouTube video on your computer, you will have no problems accessing this course.
Course Dates and Registration
All course offerings are currently full. If you would like to be added to the waiting list for one of the courses below, please email ecourse@ocasi.org.
Course 1 – August 31 – October 2, 2009
- Course 2 – October 5 – November 6, 2009
- Course 3 – November 9 – December 11, 2009
- Course 4 – November 9 – December 11, 2009 (Courses 3 and 4 will be running concurrently)
- Course 5 – December 14, 2009 – January 22, 2010 (Please note that this course lasts for 6 weeks because of the holiday break in December. In this case, Module 2 will run over 2 weeks, which includes some of the holiday time.)
For more information, please contact:
Immaculate Tumwine,
Project Coordinator,
OCASI
110 Eglinton Avenue. West Suite 200,
Toronto M4R 1A3
Tel: (416) 322-4950 Ext. 285,
Fax: (416) 322-8084
Email: ecourse@ocasi.org
Funded by:
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