Preface

This project brings together a common understanding of relationship violence (RV) across the lifespan and resources/links on one site.

Dr. Balbir Gurm, the facilitator of the Network to Eliminate Violence in Relationships (NEVR) and a faculty member at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) led the development of this online resource while on educational leave (sabbatical) from her teaching and service duties, with key writing support from Glaucia Salgado, Professor Jennifer Marchbank and Sheila Early.

Professionals from multiple fields/perspectives provided review, input and feedback as the book evolved to ensure that key information was captured. This interdisciplinary team included: Gary Thandi, Daljit Gill-Badesha, Julie Czeck,  Sobhana Jaya-Madhavan, Jim Cessford, Andrea Alexon, Sonia Andhi, CJ Rowe and Amarjit Sahota.

This process has allowed the emergence of a publication which includes multiple perspectives and resources to provide a comprehensive overview of relationship violence. This online platform is intended to be a living resource that is useful to all readers, but particularly British Columbians. If you would like to contribute to this work, please email NEVR@kpu.ca.

A note on content and use

Chapter one includes summaries on chapters that follow. As well, each chapter identifies key messages that may help you decide which chapter you want to give more time and attention too. We anticipate that readers will use this book to ‘dip’ into different topics to develop their understandings of specific areas or to simply access the resources. As such, we have repeated some material in certain chapters and also refer readers to other chapters to further develop a theme. So, if you read each chapter in turn you will find duplicate or similar material in more than one place – this is intentional.

Also, there are many hyperlinks to resources. Some references can only be accessed through a library so are not linked. You will find the full citation at the end of the chapter and you can use it to request the resource from the KPU library or find it at another library.

This book is available under a Creative Commons licence, this means that you can use any materials in your classes and/or to provide services, but please make sure that you give due credit to the authors. If you adapt/update the material, please email a copy to NEVR@kpu.ca.