A Winnipeg-based pilot program offering medical support to survivors of intimate partner violence with traumatic brain injuries — the only program of its kind in Canada, advocates say — abruptly ended in June, leaving participants with nowhere else to turn for help.
The Intimate Partner Violence Traumatic Brain Injury program started in 2020, with Winnipeg-based neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Ellis offering services to Nunavut residents in Rankin Inlet. The pilot moved to Manitoba, where it was run through the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and the Pan Am Clinic’s concussion program.
Intimate partner violence often involves repeated attacks on a person’s head, face and neck, which puts survivors at a high risk of sustaining a traumatic brain injury, according to the program’s website.
Nine in 10 survivors report blows to the face, neck, head and strangulation, according to non-profit Supporting Survivors of Abuse and Brain Injury Through Research (SOAR). About 44 per cent of Canadian women will experience violence at the hands of a partner in their lifetime, SOAR’s website said.
“The scope of survivors who are dealing with brain injury from intimate partner violence across this country is massive, in the thousands every year, but it still remains an understudied, underfunded and unrecognized disability that is affecting tons of women,” said SOAR co-founder and executive director Karen Mason.
The vast majority of the Winnipeg program’s clients were from First Nations in northern Manitoba and Inuit communities in Nunavut. About 63 per cent of Indigenous women will experience physical or sexual assault in their lifetime, Statistics Canada data shows.
Mason said the Winnipeg-based pilot program was the only place in Canada where survivors could receive dedicated support for traumatic brain injuries caused by intimate partner violence.
“The reality is there aren’t dedicated supports and services for these survivors that they can go to as a backup plan,” Mason said.
“It’s an incredible blow that it has been shut down.”
Delma McLeod, a First Nations mental health clinician and psychiatric nurse with the pilot program, said she saw her last clients on June 10.
“It was working really well. Now it’s gone and I had to sit in front of these women and tell them, ‘we can’t see you anymore,'” McLeod said.
She said she worked with about 60 clients and was getting up to 25 referrals a day by the time the program ended.
The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said in a statement to CBC News that the pilot program’s trial period ended earlier in the summer while “space and resource limitations impacted the ability to provide sustained services for these patients.”
The health authority says the program is seeking a permanent home within Manitoba’s sexual assault and intimate partner violence program.
A spokesperson for Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said their office “has encouraged WRHA to find a suitable long-term space in order to continue the program.”
While the health authority looks for a facility, Ashley Stewart, a forensic nurse and nursing co-ordinator for the Hummingbird sexual assault and intimate partner violence crisis response program at Klinic Community Health, said there are very few resources available to survivors in Manitoba now that the pilot has ended.
“It can be difficult for us, as providers right now, to not have a lot of answers for those folks to be able to connect them anywhere,” Stewart said.
“We really just don’t have anywhere specific to send them,” she said, adding Hummingbird staff are largely referring clients to walk-ins and emergency rooms now.
Stacey Dreiger started her recovery journey with Dr. Ellis through the pilot program in 2022 after she survived an assault by a former partner that left her with a severe concussion and facial injuries.
She said she felt “heartbroken” during her final appointment.
“I felt like I lost my rock, my foundation,” Dreiger said.
Over the course of three years, clinic staff provided Dreiger with ongoing concussion care and support, including therapeutic exercises to address the double vision she experienced, and medication to help with daily headaches and nerve damage.
She said the compassionate atmosphere made her feel like she had the space to heal after many stressful visits to Winnipeg hospitals.
“It was a safe place. I didn’t feel like I had to hold anything back,” Dreiger said.
“I’m not willing to rip open that wound again to start all over again with someone that doesn’t know my story, doesn’t know my history, doesn’t know my medical situation.”
McLeod said clients, particularly Indigenous survivors, often told her that they felt seen and heard within the walls of the clinic.
“When you get to a place where you get to go and get some help and you’re seen as a person that matters, that makes all the difference in the world. A lot of these people don’t feel like they matter. And when they shut down this program, to me that spoke volumes of ‘we don’t matter,'” she said.
McLeod said she is still able to work with a handful of local clients through Prairie Soul Therapy, her personal practice in Winnipeg. But most participants travelled into the city from northern Manitoba and Nunavut, where these resources aren’t available, McLeod said.
“Hopefully they’re going to hang on to some of the stuff that we worked on together, but I really think that when you don’t have that ongoing care, you slip back,” she said.
Dreiger said she will try to maintain the progress she made during her time with the brain injury program, calling the clinic a “treasure” for survivors in Manitoba and Nunavut.
“While I am heartbroken it’s done, I’m more concerned for the people coming out now that aren’t even going to have the opportunity,” Dreiger said.
“Where are they going to go?”
If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911. If you’re affected by family or intimate partner violence, you can look for help through crisis lines and local support services.
