Twin Traumas: Children In Domestic Violence Shelters During The COVID-Era

Twin traumas: children in domestic violence shelters during the COVID-era

By Izzie Helenchilde

Insults. Drunken rages. Ugly threats. Foul names. Punching. Kicking. Broken bones.

These are just some of the dangers and humiliations witnessed by children living with family violence. During pandemic lockdowns, these children were trapped at home with that violence and nowhere to turn. There were no trusted adults to confide in, no teachers or coaches to contact authorities. Just a tiny world filled with violence.

Yet many managed to escape that violence, despite the challenges of being isolated with an abuser. During the pandemic, more than 17,000 children fled to domestic violence shelters with their mothers. Safely lodged in shelters, their trauma was finally over. But another loomed.

Two years into the pandemic, shelter workers, counsellors and children’s advocates are warning that this cohort of children may be suffering the double trauma of family violence followed by the strain of congregate living under strict COVID-19 protocols.

Living in a shelter during COVID-19 means observing practices like social distancing and masking in common areas at all times. Other than their bedrooms children share with their mothers, “home” offers no relief from pandemic protocols.

Masks stay on, even during intense and emotional therapy sessions. Many struggle to keep up with online school, while sharing a busy, crowded space with other families, often while trying to conceal their family circumstances from their peers. Babies and toddlers who arrived at shelters early in the pandemic have never seen an unmasked human face other than their mother’s — something that may undermine critical developmental learning.

Now experts and child advocates are raising the alarm about the double trauma these children have faced, warning that the long-term effects could be significant.

“Trauma’s very powerful,” Tom Scholberg, Senior Manager of Community Services at the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, cautions. Mitigating the damage is possible but, “it’s never quite what you see in the movies, where there’s an epiphany all of a sudden and everything’s fine. It takes a long time.”

Irwin Elman, Ontario’s former Child Advocate, worries that the trauma absorbed by these children may be building towards an eruption. Elman says a group of young Syrian refugees shared with him their own delayed reaction to trauma. “When they were in Syria in a war zone, as children, it was really difficult,” Elman explains. It was only after they arrived safely in Canada that the horror finally pierced through. “It didn’t really hit them emotionally until things got to be a little breathable for them,” Elman says. He fears the same fate awaits many of the children living in family violence shelters. “We’re not paying enough attention to the way that trauma is being dealt with.” Elman believes children need more support to “deal with the emotional residue of the pandemic.”

The concerns come in the wake of warnings from workers at domestic violence shelters at the outset of the pandemic that constant isolation at home and increased stress would lead to an explosion of family violence. A national survey of gender-based violence service providers conducted in 2020 found that 46 per cent had observed increases in the severity and frequency of family violence.

The data is consistent with trends observed by various provincial family violence shelter associations.

Crystal Giesbrecht, the research and communications director for the Provincial Association of Transition Houses and Services of Saskatchewan, says that Saskatchewan women “are experiencing more severe forms of violence and some really dangerous situations.”

Amber Wardell, communications and resource co-ordinator for the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses says the severity of the violence experienced by women in Ontario increased during the pandemic, as did levels of coercive control or emotional manipulation.

Amy Fitzgerald, the executive director of the B.C. Society of Transition Houses reports the same trend. “The severity of violence is high,” Fitzgerald says, “and so are the levels of anxiety and mental health concerns.”

Earlier this month, the Canadian Femicide Observatory reported the homicides of 173 women in 2021 and an overall 26 per cent increase in the killings of women and girls over the course of the pandemic. The Native Women’s Association of Canada says that 17 per cent of Indigenous women reported experiencing violence in just the first three months of the pandemic, compared to 10 per cent reporting spousal violence over the previous five years in 2014.

While many survivors of domestic abuse flee to shelters without calling police, early data on police-reported incidents also point to increases in family violence during the pandemic. In February, StatsCan released data showing a 5.5 per cent increase in the number of domestic disturbance calls for service made to police agencies across the country from March 2020 to February of 2021, compared with the same period the year before.

In a 2020 Norwegian study, 83 per cent of service providers at domestic violence shelters reported being more concerned about children than any other group of abuse victims. Concerns about children still living at home with an abuser focused on the increased risk associated with pandemic-related isolation and stress.

Concerns regarding children living in shelters were focused on pandemic-related cutbacks to services resulting children being stuck in shelters 24 hours a day with no diversions and reduced counselling. Even in a congregate living situation, there were concerns about isolation related to children not being able to have friends visit and not being permitted to associate with anyone in the shelter besides their own family.

The same study noted a sharp increase in calls to a national children’s helpline. This was mirrored in Canada, when the call volume at the Kids’ Help Phone went from 1.9 million calls before the pandemic to an astonishing 4.5 million calls in 2021.

When a child arrives at a shelter, the violence is over, but not the trauma. Indeed, the child is only just starting to deal with that trauma, says Deanna Sudnik, a senior manager at Mitzpah Transition House in Dawson Creek, B.C.

Older children in particular, often feel a lot of anger when they first arrive, she says. “Mum is exhausted and she’s now away from the crisis,” Sudnik explains. She no longer needs to be hypervigilant and it’s not uncommon for mothers to sleep a lot and experience low energy at first.

That means the child, who has not only experienced the trauma of family violence but has also undergone a disruptive move to a new address, often gets less maternal attention at a time when they really need it, Sudnik explains. In the case of tweens and teens, they often want to immerse themselves in their circle of friends, a strategy that gives them a sense of normalcy and helps them heal — but pandemic restrictions eliminated that option, says Sudnik.

For many, online school only added to the stress and anxiety of living in a shelter.

Allison Leslie, a family support counsellor at Chrysalis House in Ottawa, tried to create a comfortable, inviting area where kids could attend classes online. With federal funding, internet capabilities were upgraded and tablets were made available to students.

But some remained reluctant. “We’ve had some kids really hesitant to turn on their cameras for online learning,” Leslie recalls. “‘What if there’s something in the background that I don’t want them to see? What if somehow they know that the wall behind me is part of a shelter?’ There’s been some anxiety from kids around that. There is no background in the learning centre that suggests they’re in the shelter, but that fear is there. That kind of insecurity around feeling different — feeling different than their friends and knowing that their friends are maybe in a more private space in their own homes,” Leslie explains.

The requirement to wear facemasks while “at home” in a shelter has also been fraught. Sudnik recalls trying to connect with a client during an emotional counselling sessions, with both wearing face masks.

“You’re trying to counsel someone who has experienced trauma, you can’t see each other’s faces (and) she’s crying and trying to blow her nose. It’s been one of the worst parts of this, without a shadow of a doubt.”

Indeed, face masks can re-traumatize patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, triggering anxiety, claustrophobia and even dissociation, according to a 2021 academic paper in the Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing.

Sudnik says that trying to counsel children while masked poses serious difficulties. “Trying to build rapport, trying to connect with the child when they can’t see your face is extremely challenging,” Sudnik says. “We used shields for a while so the kids could see the counsellor’s face…But then the mandates changed.” Sudnik says the new mandates required a closed face covering that eliminated face shields as an alternative to masks. Sudnik recognizes the value of facemasks and credits them with controlling the spread of COVID-19 but she laments the impact they have on children’s counselling. “Kids can’t trust you if they can’t see you.”

Linda McLean, executive director of the Brenda Strafford Centre in Calgary, an organization that offers transitional housing, counselling and daycare services to family violence survivors, says that face masks are “an impediment in conducting child therapy sessions where there’s a lot of hands-on play therapy and engagement that happens.”

The demand for effective child-therapy may be higher than ever. The mental health of Canadian youths has been declining since the pandemic began. “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the acuity of the needs that are presenting,” McLean says of the Strafford Centre’s youngest clients who are “experiencing significant mental health crises.” McLean adds that the children are often remarkably young, referencing three-year-olds with symptoms of anxiety and depression and an eight-year-old expressing suicidal ideation.

A Toronto study found that over 66 per cent of children age two to five and over 70 per cent of youths age six through 18 suffered some degree of mental health decline during the first wave of COVID-19. Social isolation was a deteriorating factor.

Facemasks may also be causing damage to young children outside of the therapist’s office. According to psychologist Anthony Bandura’s theory of social learning, very young children become socialized by monitoring the reactions of others to their own behaviour. Constant masking presents significant developmental barriers to very young children.

McLean has grave concerns about the repercussions of continuous masking around young children. “It’s definitely impacting the speed of the development of emotional intelligence. We’ve got kids who have never seen an adult unmasked besides their Mum.”

Meanwhile, many older kids simply feel frustrated over having to wear facemasks at home. “They’re like, ‘Why do I have to wear a mask in my own house?’ Home has been people’s one safe place during the pandemic (where) they don’t have to follow all those rules for COVID,” says Allison Leslie.

Worse, such rules can be triggering for kids who have experienced family violence, says Erin Baydak. “Rules can mimic abusive behaviour, with power and control dynamics,” she notes, adding that Chrysalis House strives to minimize the imposition of rules as much as possible while still maintaining cooperative, communal living.

Katrina Barron, the manager of residential services at the Medicine Hat Women’s Shelter Society takes a similar view, Barron says it was particularly distressing when children who had been receiving polarized, anti-mandate messaging from a parent, felt their rights were being violated when they were asked to wear masks, wash their hands etc… “We don’t want to ever create an environment where we are enforcing control on lives of people who have just left a controlling environment; however, our hands were tied,” Barron says.

Experts worry about the long-term impact of the double trauma faced by children living in domestic violence shelters during the pandemic. While the long-range effects of these dual stressors are as yet unknown, research has shown that the long-term impact of family violence on children can be life-changing, even without the added pressures of the pandemic.

Exposure to family violence can rewire children’s brains, making them more likely to develop PTSD or depression, according to a 2021 medical study in Developmental Psychology. Soberingly, the study found that this finding held true just as much for children who had witnessed family violence as for those who had suffered abuse themselves.

“Trauma changes the way the brain perceives things,” says Tom Scholberg, who, as part of his duties with the Boys and Girls Club, oversees the Ottawa Community Youth Diversion Program, which helps youths in conflict with the law demonstrate accountability while avoiding a criminal record. “Trauma heightens certain pathways,” he explains.

Trauma can cause a person to feel threatened or perceive danger where there isn’t any, causing unnecessary hypervigilance, Scholberg says. Particularly if left untreated, trauma can lead to impulsivity, lashing out and even coping mechanisms such as self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.

Scholberg says the youths referred to the diversion program share a common thread: they have all experienced trauma. That is not to say that everyone who experiences trauma will come into conflict with the law but, Scholberg notes, everyone who comes into conflict with the law has almost certainly experienced trauma.

Irwin Elman says trauma fundamentally alters the way children see themselves. “When children experience that trauma,” Elman explains, “there’s a narrative that comes with it, a way of understanding themselves in the world. The trauma leaves them with a difficult story about themselves…They think they’re the cause of the problem. They internalize that.”

No one knows what the long-term impact will be on the children who have had to cope with the twin traumas of family violence and congregate living during a pandemic.

Katrina Barron worries that the pandemic itself may have reinforced negative messages for children. “It’s been two years of normalizing those feelings of loss of control and fear and conflict,” she says. “It’s ok to be isolated, being fearful is normal. A lot of that parallels family violence.” Barron says that normalizing things like fear or isolation at a societal level makes it harder to recognize as unhealthy at home.

Irwin Elron believes the best way for the children who suffered the dual traumas to recover “is to find a way to define and understand themselves in the world as positive, capable, powerful human beings, Because trauma, in some ways, beats that out of you.”

How to obtain that new self-perception? Tom Scholenberg recommends people “build on new experiences that can change the pathways of thinking, feeling and behaving.” But he cautions the process is daunting. “It’s not easy. It’s continuous work.” Yet, Scholenberg remains optimistic. “There are some amazingly resilient people that have experienced incredible trauma that have the most amazing skill sets and strengths,” he says.

Sara Austin, the founder of Child First Canada, a non-profit children’s advocacy organization. urges two courses of action. First, children must be removed from exposure to trauma immediately. “We. know from research that the earlier you intervene and provide children with background supports to help them heal and recover, the better their journey will be,” she says. Secondly, it is crucial to listen to children. “Kids are experts in their own lives. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to solve all the problems. And it certainly doesn’t mean that they’re going to make the final decision, but they need to be consulted and meaningfully involved,” Austin says.

With little to compare and nothing to prepare the world for these circumstances, we cannot predict what the impact of the twin traumas of family violence and congregate living in a pandemic will be on children; nor can we anticipate their best option for recovery.

“Time is going to really tell that story,” Jan Reimer, Executive Director of the Alberta Association of Women’s Shelters says. “I think that’s something that’s going to play out over a very long time.”