Relationship violence (RV) is any form of physical, emotional, spiritual and financial abuse, negative social control or coercion that is suffered by anyone who has a bond or relationship with the offender(s). In the literature, we find words such as intimate partner violence (IPV), interpersonal violence (IVP), neglect, dating violence, family violence, battery, child neglect, child abuse, bullying, seniors or elder abuse, stalking, cyberbullying, strangulation, technology- facilitated coercive control, honour killing, gang violence, social isolation, circulation of intimate images and workplace violence. Violence can be perpetrated by persons in opposite-sex relationships (Carney et al., 2007), within same-sex relationships (Rollè et al., 2018) and in relationships in which the victim is transgender (The Scottish Trans Alliance, 2010). Relationship violence is a result of multiple impacts such as taken for granted inequalities, policies and practices that accept sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and ageism. It can span the entire age spectrum and it may start in-utero and end with the death of the victim. RV can occur in any space.

NEVR – Network to Eliminate Violence in Relationships

NEVR (https://nevr.org) is a registered charity of almost 300 individuals from over 50 organizations. With members from service organizations, government ministries, health, social services and justice professionals, educators, researchers and community members that advocates for policy changes to address relationship violence. In this chapter, we describe how we became NEVR, contributions we have been able to make to create change, and the resources that we have developed. It also mentions members who have been recognized for their work on RV.

NEVR Framework

The NEVR framework is grounded in a social constructivist environmental framework in which the individual, family, and community all interact to establish a culture that accepts or rejects RV. The individual response and reaction are mediated by their personal understanding of their resources and their abilities to take action. Survivors report or seek help based on their personal roles and positions in society. As well, those who provide services or create policy/law setting agencies do so through their own multiple intersectionalities. When creating NEVR, we paid attention to the power imbalances that exist and hegemonic practices that pertain.

Next, we explain how we became NEVR and we we have evolved since conception in 2011.

Becoming NEVR

In 2011, service providers approached Dr. Balbir Gurm, Nursing Faculty, KPU. Service providers requested that along with hosting yearly conferences with expert speakers, she provides a space for them to learn about other organizations and their programs, provides a voice to address issues that are faced by clients and finds ways to advocate for change.

Dr. Gurm agreed to lead this initiative with one caveat. She wanted to understand what all those who work in addressing the cycle of abuse thought. In 2011, she facilitated a project with colleagues from the domestic violence sector to understand the perspectives of police, court personal, non-profit service providers, government services, educators and the healthcare providers, as well as offenders and survivors. This step supported the community’s call for advocacy and sharing amongst organizations. It was found that organizations did not fully understand what was happening in different departments within their own organization nor in other organizations, and there were many ideas on how to improve the system. See the full report (Gurm et al., 2013). This report was formally launched at a KPU media event and attended by about 100 service providers, educators, police, justice and health personnel. In the first meetings, the idea was to name the committee and to create a strategic plan. This strategic planning session was led by KPU Vice-President Emeritus, Linda Coyle, who has been involved with equity and women’s issues most of her adult life. Linda served on many boards including Richmond Chamber of Commerce, Surrey Social Policy Advisory Committee, BC Labour Force Development Board, the Coalition of Visible Minority Peoples of BC, and Rotary to name a few. She was the founding (1991) president of WPSE-Women in Post-Secondary Education. The session was co- led by Maureen Shaw; a union activist and officer, a President of the College Institute Educators’ Association (now FPSE), Vice-President (Negotiations/Grievances) of the Kwantlen Faculty Association (KFA), founding President of the National Union of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (NUCAUT), and a Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress. She was also a member of the BC Labour Relations Board. This half-day meeting created a mission and strategic plan. At the end of the day, the 60+ members who attended the meeting could not agree on a name. They wanted something that had a catchy acronym.

Dr. Gurm was declared the facilitator for the network because it was understood that in her position as KPU Nursing Faculty, she was not competing for services funding and would be a neutral facilitator without prejudice. Her first duty was to run a poll for a name. By a narrow margin of one vote, the Network to Eliminate Violence in Relationships or NEVR for short was created.

NEVR was established in 2012, as a committee that values everyone’s opinion and is a safe space for all individuals to voice their concerns. In 2022, NEVR was asked to separate their account from the Faculty of Health at KPU. In order to make this change, NEVR registered as a society with a board. The board set in motion a process to make the society a registered charity. NEVR became a registered charity in 2024. NEVR is open to all, not exclusionary, welcomes diverse voices and allows those present to have a vote if consensus is not reached at meetings. It is agreed that anyone’s particular knowledge/voice is not privileged, and dialogue is encouraged to increase understanding. Also, it is understood that the facilitator (executive director) would advocate with and to different government bodies and organizations. Community organizations that are involved in NEVR include victim support services, police departments at a municipal and provincial level, health authorities, religious organizations, businesses, secondary and post- secondary education institutions and different levels of government and public organizations. See the complete list of NEVR members and community partners.

Actions

NEVR has four – eight meetings throughout the calendar year and at least one conference annually. Through NEVR, several initiatives have been developed by its members in partnerships. These include academic partnerships in interdisciplinary fields (e.g., forensics, nursing, psychology, gender studies) manifested in conferences and research projects, increasing public awareness through media outreach, as well as policy change. Four subcommittees were initially established: conference, media, courts, and children. Each subcommittee works on their particular area of interest. The conference committee remains the most active, organizing a yearly conference that started as a one-day symposium with presentations from experts. This format changed later to a two-day conference with experts and members sharing best practices to increase understandings of the state of knowledge but also the RV system as a whole. During covid it developed into a 4 half day weekly online conference at the request of the members. At the time of writing, the conference committee was considering switching to a two consecutive days hybrid conference.

The court committee no longer meets, but NEVR on behalf of members continues to advocate for integrated courts, both criminal and family areas, as a one-stop-shop for services. The media committee was very active in the early days with a monthly hour-long radio program, media releases and articles about special events. Now, volunteers do social media and the facilitator is a frequent guest on media. The children’s committee was active early on, lead by an executive director from the Vancouver area. After a phase of slowing down its practices due to issues related to distance and time, the children’s committee work continued with the assistance of nursing students. Working together, Surrey community school staff members and high-risk girls created a toolkit for middle school children (Gurm et al., n.d.). The pilot was evaluated with good results, others (Walsh et al., 2016; Zwi et al., 2007) have found that school-based programs increase protective behaviour knowledge regardless of the type of intervention program. Similar findings have been suggested by Fitriana et al. (2018) who also assert that peer education models are effective in addressing relationship violence. This tookit was implemented at two private schools in Surrey. In 2024, NEVR created toolkits for Health Relationships funded by Government of Canada’s Community Services Recovery Fund. There are two documents with the same information, one is written at the level of pre-teen and another at the young adult level.

Since the first edition, the Community Champion Toolkit has evolved into the Violence Intervention Program; and the Toolkit for Healthcare providers in British Columbia has been totally revamped into the Violence Screening Toolkit for Health Professionals with the assistance of a student intern funded by our national partner Alliance Against Violence & Adversity – The Alliance Canada. A new toolkit for Men Who Suffer Abuse has been added (all are available for free at www.nevr.org).

These Toolkits focus on recognizing domestic violence and signs of abuse, as well as understanding why victims of abuse stay in abusive relationships. They include information about overcoming hesitation with helping which is adapted from the Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children (e.g., feeling like it’s none of your business vs. realizing that it could be a matter for life and death; violence is everyone’s business) (Bancroft & Silverman, 2002). Toolkits also include action items for talking to the abuser, including what to do if they deny the abuse as well as safety planning. In addition, these toolkits offer cultural considerations and their influence on behaviour, specifically Aboriginal women, men, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and refugee women, and offer some legal considerations for intervention in RV. The youth toolkits cover several topics including communication, bullying and sexting.

Academic Outreach

In terms of academic conferences and partnerships, NEVR has hosted thirteen interdisciplinary conferences and twelve workshops between 2012 to 2024. We estimate these conferences had the collaboration of around 2000 people and an averaged audience of 100 participants yearly. NEVR acts as a placement for students from different universities. In addition, NEVR’s framework was shared extensively through anacademic tour with university faculty in Thailand and Brazil. It was presented at international conferences for nursing professionals in Australia and an international forensic nursing conference in Vancouver, BC. More recently, how NEVR operates and its advocacy work on prevention was shared at the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing Conference.

NEVR has also created partnership opportunities through which graduate students can conduct and report on real-world research to bring social change to the community. Literature reviews to help create programs and write funding proposals continue to be developed. These can be found at www.nevr.org.

Increasing Community Awareness

Besides having its own campaign, NEVR also partners with other organizations working to eliminate relationship violence. NEVR has been active in the international mass action event to end violence against women, One Billion Rising since 2013, and NEVR is beginning to raise  awareness  about  relationship violence against men. Additionally, NEVR was part of the Justice Summit on the family justice system in BC in 2014. In 2016, NEVR, using the performance of a specially commissioned play (funded by a corporate donation of $5000) held an information and fundraising event to educate the public on what happens when a 911 call is made covering events and actions from the time of the call until the judge adjudicates. In the play, NEVR members acted out their real-life roles, and service providers played the roles of offenders and survivors. The play educated the public on how to navigate the justice system. A question/answer period was also held (see short videos of the play).

Education and Training

NEVR instituted a social media campaign utilizing the hashtags #nevrcampaign, utilizing social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, and creating a YouTube channel. Also, another hashtag was created (i.e., #saysomething) by NEVR’s ally, the provincial government. The saysomethingbc.ca website was created (it was later removed). In 2015, NEVR members made monthly appearances on a local radio station (REDFM, 93.1FM), in both English and Punjabi, and have been on radio and television programmes across a variety of talk shows and networks. Since 2015 to the present, NEVR facilitator, appears several times a year on radio and or television to raise awareness regarding relationship violence. NEVR developed a complete webpage with information about the organization, links to all of the Toolkits, as well as descriptions and contact information of other resources. NEVR continues to actively present Toolkits in a variety of settings. Presentations continue to be made to communities and university classes. Toolkits are presented yearly to nursing and criminology classes resulting in about 300 students being trained in relationship violence awareness and prevention. Toolkits are also presented at community organizations, union meetings, city staff and the public resulting in the training of 100 adults total. Information tables and campaigning at KPU and communities events such as Pride and KDocs continues.

Members have written articles for local magazines and newspapers on relationship violence. NEVR toolkits have been the focus of other articles.

NEVR is a member of the AVA Project to bring academics and communities together across Canada to address adversity against women and girls.

Policy Change

November 2012 NEVR, along with the Provincial Office of Domestic Violence, hosted a forum that brought together seven provincial ministers and 90 community members resulting in the ministers signing an agreement to have ministries collaborate and break down silos when dealing with RV. This resulted in a slow thaw.

NEVR advocated to the BC Provincial Office of Domestic Violence until it folded,  and continues to advocate to government personal and elected officials: Mayors of Surrey and Delta, Assistant Deputy Minister Public Safety, Minister of Justice, Minister of Social and Family Development, and Minister of Labour, as well as policy analysts in the above ministries and members of parliament. Over the years, the following changes to public policy have occurred:

• Person Fleeing Abuse (effective Dec. 2012), an alert is applied to each contact on each case;
• The Family Law Act has increased the ability of courts to deal with family violence; and in addition, a dedicated crown for each case file in the Surrey, B.C. courts.
• Change to rental legislation (2015), so that women fleeing violence are not required to provide 30 days’ notice to end their tenancy.
• NEVR advocated with union allies to local Surrey Ministers (provincial) and MLAs to push for workplace policy change and paid leave for survivors of domestic violence. The government passed legislation (2020) that allows survivors of domestic and sexual violence up to five days leave to deal with their trauma. This is a step towards addressing the world health pandemic of domestic violence.
• NEVR created policy briefs on integrated courts and increasing resiliency and preventing adverse childhood experiences and are working with allies to advocate for system change. These and other publications can be found at nevr.org.
• Intimate Images Protection Act (2023) to make illegal the distribution of intimate images. An office has been setup to remove images without going through the court process. If you need help with sextortion or removing your images you can get help on Protect your images – Province of British Columbia.

Awards and Honours

NEVR was recognized by the City of Surrey as part of its 2016 Public Safety Strategy Taking Action Together. NEVR was also a nominee for the 2013 Provincial Nesika Award for Excellence in Cultural Diversity (Certificate received April 4, 2014). Sheila Early, NEVR member, was honoured with the Young Women’s Christian Association’s (YWCA) 2019 Women of Distinction Award in Health and Wellness. NEVR member Kamaljit Lehal was honoured with the 2019 Equality & Diversity Award for advocating for changes to laws and policies that compromise the safety of immigrant women in abusive relationships. Dr. Jennifer Marchbank was honoured with Shakti Award for Academic Excellence (2020) and YWCA Women of Distinction Award (2022). Dr. Balbir Gurm for her work in the community including relationship violence is honoured with multiple awards: Canadian Academy of Nursing, Fellow (2021 – present), NNPBC Nursing Excellence: Innovation in Nursing Award (2022), Darpan Community Crusader Award (2022), BC Achievement Award (2021), YWCA Woman of Distinction Community Champion Award (2021), YWCA Woman of Distinction Connecting the Community Award (2021), Featured UBC Nursing Alumnus (2021), Soropotomist Ruby Award (2017) and Times of Canada Outstanding Leader Award (2013). NEVR member Gary Thandi, executive director, Moving Forward Family Services Society (MFFSS) was recognized for his innovation of MFFSS that serves clients on a sliding scale. Using intern students, they can offer low barrier counseling for those needing counseling. Gary has supported NEVR from its early days and continues to do so. We are proud that Gary was honoured with Darpan’s Community Crusader Award (2024).

As the NEVR facilitator, Dr. Gurm was invited and attended the Justice Summit on better responses to domestic violence, provided a submission to the Cowper Report on justice reform and was part of the Death Review Panel on intimate partner violence (Justice BC, 2014; Cowper, 2012; BC Government, 2016). Watch a video on the purpose of death review panels (Learning to End Abuse, 2017). In 2024, Dr. Gurm was asked to share NEVR’s work and participate in the upcoming Justice Summit. As a result, the sector is more informed and increasingly interdisciplinary.

Cycle

Each conference (13 to date) hosted by NEVR has a session on issues that impact the community and discussions on actions including advocacy for policy changes which may inform planning by ministries and municipalities. Also, the information is used to inform NEVR’s strategic plan and take action to improve the RV sector.

Conclusion

NEVR is a charitable organization based on community participatory action research aiming to eliminate relationship violence. Its goal is to create a society in which relationship violence is neither accepted nor tolerated. NEVR also aims to have research projects and organizing mechanisms that bring together stakeholders to identify and act on matters related to relationship violence, and host student internships.

The continued process of creating and keeping this network is based on a broad framework encompassing a socio-ecological understanding of RV, intersectionality, appreciative inquiry, cultural safety, and multiple ways of knowing (see chapter 6). NEVR’s initiatives thus far have included academic conferences and workshops, student practicums, graduate student research opportunities, community outreach and awareness-raising via social media, radio, and television. Also, NEVR has developed and presented toolkits that support the general public, service, and health professionals to intervene in RV, as well as advocacy for policy change. The partnership across and between community members and community services allows for dialogue, and the creation of effective change based on continual feedback and assessment of the initiative’s success. This process may be useful with other social issues that are pervasive wicked problems.

References

Bancroft, L., & Silverman, J. G. (2002). Assessing risk to children from batterers [PDF]. Western Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/cdv_enewsletter/assessingrisktochildren.authcheckdam.pdf

BC First Nations Justice Council. (n.d.). Get help. BC First Nations Justice Council. https://bcfnjc.com/landing-page/get-help/

British Columbia Government. (2016). BC Coroners service death review panel: A review of intimate partner violence deaths 2010-2015 [PDF]. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/death-review-panel/intimate-partner-violence2010-2015.pdf

Carney, M., Buttell, B., & Dutton, D. (2007). Women who perpetrate intimate partner violence: A review of the literature with recommendations for treatment. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 12(1), 108–115. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222426549

Cowper, G. (2012). A criminal justice system for the 21st century: Final report to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, BC Justice Reform Initiative: Honourable Shirley Bond [PDF]. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/law-crime-and-justice/about-bc-justice-system/justice-reform-initiatives/cowperfinalreport.pdf

Fitriana, R. N., Suryawati, C., & Zubaidah, Z. (2018). Effect of peer education model on knowledge and self-efficacy of children in the prevention of physical sexual violence. Belitung Nursing Journal, 4(1), 51-57. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331217558

Gurm, B., Smith, N., Sahota, B., Hunt, C., Haer, J., Gill, P.; Choi, G., La, C., &  Bickle, C. A. (n.d.). Peer to peer manual: Healthy relationships, sexual health, drug abuse, and internet safety: A peer mentoring guide [PDF]. Kwantlen Polytechnic University. https://www.kpu.ca/sites/default/files/NEVR/Peer%20Mentor%20Manual%20for%20Middle%20and%20High%20Schools.pdf

Gurm, B., Thandi, G., Early, S., Majedi, M., Menon, P., Cheema, M., & KPU Nursing Students. (2013). Understanding violence against women in relationships from multiple perspectives [PDF]. Kwantlen Polytechnic University. https://www.kpu.ca/sites/default/files/NEVR/Understanding%20Abuse%20from%20Multiple%20Perspectives%20final%20report%20%20Dec%206%20%202013_0.pdf

Justice British Columbia. (2014). Better responses to violence against women [PDF]. 4th Justice Summit. https://www.justicebc.ca/app/uploads/sites/11/2016/03/FourthSummitReport.pdf

Learning to End Abuse. (2017, October 11). Domestic Violence Death Review Committees [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2cLC62UDag&amp

Network to Eliminate Violence in Relationships. (2020). NEVR partners. Kwantlen Polytechnic University. https://www.kpu.ca/nevr/partners

Network to Eliminate Violence in Relationships. (2020). Resources. Kwantlen Polytechnic University. https://www.kpu.ca/nevr/resources

Rollè, L., Giardina, G., Caldarera, A. M., Gerino, E., & Brustia, P. (2018). When intimate partner violence meets same-sex couples: A review of same-sex intimate partner violence. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01506

Soroptimist International of White Rock. (2023). Dream it be it 2023. Soroptimist. https://www.soroptimistwhiterock.ca/supporting/dream-it-be-it/dream-it-be-it-2023/

The Scottish Trans Alliance. (2010). Scottish trans. https://www.scottishtrans.org

Walsh, K., Zwi, K., Woolfenden, S., & Shlonsky, A. (2016). Assessing the effectiveness of school-based sexual abuse prevention programs. Family Matters, 97, 5-15. https://research.monash.edu/en/publications/assessing-the-effectiveness-of-school-based-sexual-abuse-preventi

Zwi, K., Woolfenden, S., Wheeler, D., O’Brien, T., Tait, P., & Williams, K. (2007). School‐based education programmes for the prevention of child sexual abuse. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 3(1), 1-40. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17636754/