Since 2024, EVA BC has worked in partnership with EQUIP Health Care on the three-year Equipping the GBV Sector for Substance Use Health project. EQUIP is leading this work with partners in the gender-based violence (GBV) sector — counselling services, shelters and transition houses, victim services, and prevention programs — here in BC but also in Ontario and New Brunswick. The project is built on an idea called Substance Use Health, defined by leaders at CAPSA (previously known as the Community Addictions Peer Support Association), that has an aim to “dismantle systemic stigma and support a non-stigmatizing approach to care for all people, regardless of their level of substance use.” EVA BC led a process to identify two community sites to take part in the project. EVA BC members, Kamloops Sexual Assault Counselling Centre and Westcoast Community Resources Society were chosen to work with EQUIP Health Care to co-design the resources shared below.
This project’s stated purpose is to support organizations and service providers to better understand the intersections of GBV, substance use, and stigma, and to strengthen approaches to substance use within service settings.
The project was built upon the understanding that because of the relationships between trauma, violence, mental health, and substance use, GBV services are often a first point of contact for people experiencing GBV who also self-identify as using substances in ways that may harm their health. And because of a range of different ways of understanding substance use, existing policies and practices across GBV and healthcare sectors, there can be challenges to providing safe, coordinated, and equitable support, particularly for those most structurally disadvantaged by racism, socioeconomic deprivation, and stigma. EQUIP Health Care notes that sector-specific mandates, funding structures, and policy constraints may also create barriers to coordinated and equitable responses.
With a co-design working process, the project partners developed a suite of practical tools to support trauma- and violence-informed, equity-oriented, culturally safe and destigmatizing approaches to supporting substance use health.
Resources launched to date include:
- An animation video focused on promoting understanding of the intersections of GBV and substance use
- A language prompter to support conversations about these intersections
- An online course: Doing Hard Things Together: Trauma- & Violence-Informed Care Curriculum to Support GBV Survivors
- A podcast about hearing from leaders in the anti-violence sector about using a trauma-and-violence informed approach: Doing Hard Things Together
The project will release resources as they are completed and make them available on the project webpage. Resources in development for release in 2026 include:
- Glimmers: An educational game to support service providers to enact equity-oriented, strengths-based approaches.
- A policy development tool designed to guide evidence-informed organizational change
- An online course intended to help staff in the GBV service sector, and others supporting GBV survivors, to understand and apply the principles of trauma- and violence-informed care (TVIC) when providing residential and outreach services to people using violence in relationships
- A resource to support engaging survivors with lived experience of substance use/stigma in improving programs, policies, and services.
