This article describes newcomer women’s experiences navigating help-seeking and accessing formal services and supports after experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) in two cities in Saskatchewan, Canada. Fifteen newcomer women who migrated to Canada from twelve different countries participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Findings relating to newcomer women’s experiences of help-seeking after experiencing IPV include a lack of awareness of domestic violence services; shelter waitlists and length of stay; interactions with police; challenges with legal assistance; negotiating parenting time with abusive partners; navigating childcare; child protection services; poverty and social assistance; and language, interpretation, and challenges working with multiple service providers. Implications for policy and practice to help service providers enhance support to newcomer women who have experienced IPV are discussed.

This study adds to a small body of Canadian literature investigating the ways that newcomer women experience, and are impacted by, intimate partner violence (IPV). The study involved qualitative interviews with 15 newcomer women who migrated to Saskatchewan, Canada, from 12 different countries. These findings provide insight into participants' complex lived experiences and illustrate how women's status as newcomers intersected with their experiences of IPV. As well as abuse related to language ability and immigration status, participants in our study described their experiences of physical; sexual; emotional; psychological; economic; and legal abuse; as well as coercive control; isolation; surveillance, stalking, and harassment while in the relationship and after separation; challenges with shared parenting; and the imposition of patriarchal values. Perpetrators of IPV maintained control by intentionally isolating survivors, and participants were also isolated due to their status as a newcomer and their limited English-language ability and social connections.

This qualitative study adds to research on the experiences of professionals who support newcomer women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV). Findings from seven focus groups with 32 service providers from newcomer-serving and domestic violence agencies in Saskatchewan, Canada, include newcomer survivors' experiences of isolation, the impact of IPV on newcomer children, and challenges and opportunities for supporting newcomer women who have experienced IPV. Service providers described gaps in existing services and the need for additional services; they also described ways of working effectively with newcomer women survivors of IPV and their children. Professionals indicated the importance of a trauma-and-violence-informed, survivor-centered approach and highlighted the need for compassion, empathy, and patience when working with newcomer women who have experienced IPV. This article includes recommendations for service providers, including IPV shelters and services and newcomer-serving agencies, to improve service to newcomer survivors.

This article presents findings from a qualitative study with parents of four Saskatchewan newcomer families (both immigrants and refugees) in central Canada on their interactions with child welfare services. We collected data through in-depth individual interviews with parents to understand their first encounters with child welfare authorities during the first 5 years of their settlement in Canada. None of the participants had any prior experiences of child protection services in their home countries. Our purpose was to gather data on ways to enhance collaboration and partnership between parents and child welfare services so as to ensure the safety and well-being of newcomer children and their families. Drawing on Foucault’s notions of governmentality about how state structures direct the conduct of individuals and groups, this study resulted in three findings: 1) perceptions on state interventions; 2) ambivalences about motherhood; and 3) working differently within the state. We conclude that negative experiences with social workers disempower newcomer parents and call for identification of ways to enhance information sharing between child protection services and immigrant communities in order to effectively protect immigrant children. We discuss practical suggestions for enhancing collaboration between child protection services and immigrant communities.

Child physical punishment (CPP) is a common form of everyday child discipline despite mounting evidence linking it to adverse childhood outcomes. Social workers throughout the world are mandated to work closely with families and children. Their attitudes towards CPP will affect how they interact with families who use CPP as a form of child discipline. In addition, social workers have an ethical duty to uphold the rights of children to be free from all forms of violence, including CPP, a promise found in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We assessed and compared the attitudes of graduating social work students towards CPP in Barbados and Canada. The findings underscore the need for the infusion of human rights education into the curriculum of all social work programs. In particular, the Convention of the Rights of the Child is a valuable instrument to enhance knowledge about human rights protections and offers an effective tool for advocating for families and children.

Most physical violence against children in their homes is rooted in physical punishment. Parents' approval of physical punishment is a primary predictor of its use. Therefore, reducing approval of physical punishment is critical to preventing physical violence against children. We explored the relative contributions of four variables to young adults' approval of physical punishment with the aim of identifying effective routes to prevention. The participants were 480 first-year university students in 3 Canadian provinces. The outcome measure was a scale assessing participants' approval of physical punishment. The predictor variables were four dimensions of participants' perceptions of their childhood physical punishment experiences: physical (frequency, severity), cognitive (perceived abusiveness, perceived deservedness), affective (short- and long-term emotional impact), and contextual (degree to which it was accompanied by reasoning, power assertion, emotional abuse, or emotional support). Most (73%) of the participants had experienced physical punishment in childhood. Of these, 78% had experienced punishments other than mild spanking with the hand; one fifth had been pushed against a wall, and one third had been hit with objects. The strongest predictor of participants' approval of physical punishment was a belief that their experiences were deserved. Reducing approval of physical punishment requires strategies to alter the perception that children deserve violence.

There are increasing calls for the universal implementation of human rights education into the curriculum of schools of social work flowing from international directives including the recent Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development Commitment to Action. With these directives as backdrop, we use, as a case study, the issue of child physical punishment with particular reference to the Caribbean region. The article discusses the prevalence of child physical punishment, social factors supporting its use, human rights agreements, and current research. Child physical punishment is one example of the breach between international human rights promises and lived realities.

Social welfare has increasingly been downloaded to community and faith-based organizations (FBOs). Many FBOs adhere to religious fundamentalist views that challenge the rights of equality-seeking groups and conflict with international human rights laws and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Regulations or policies governing how FBOs provide public services are lacking or nonexistent. This article explores guidelines emanating from court decisions on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms' interpretation of religious freedom and provides a framework through which governments may develop policy governing the delivery of faith-based public services in a manner consistent with equality rights.

The aim of this paper is to examine and deconstruct the process of denying human rights protection to one group (children) on the basis that if this was done, another group (parents and teachers) could be construed as ‘criminal.’ In 2004 the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that children's constitutional rights to security, equality and to be free from cruel and unusual treatment were not infringed when assaults made on them were made by a parent or caregiver. The Supreme Court upheld s. 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada which provides parents, teachers and those acting in their place with a defence that justifies assaults on children. The Supreme Court majority acknowledged that s. 43 ‘permits conduct toward children that would be criminal in the case of adult victims’ but the distinction, on the basis of age, is designed to protect children by not criminalizing their parents and teachers. Rather than denying rights to some to save others from the fate of being construed a criminal is it not incumbent upon us to uphold an inclusive understanding of human rights and question the system that would so readily drop a vulnerable group from its' protection over fear of labelling those with the upper hand as criminal?

On 30 January 2004 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, in a 6–3 decision, that section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada does not violate the rights of children. Section 43 provides a legal defence for parents, teachers and others acting in the place of a parent who use force (corporal punishment) to correct a child’s behaviour (Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law v. Canada (Attorney General), 2004). However, the Supreme Court set limits on when and under what conditions section 43 can be used as a defence (Table 1). Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada states that:

It is hard to accept the breaking off of a chain of logic that might otherwise be available to discuss the rationality of one position versus another. Suddenly, in the midst of a discussion of competing points, the flow of logic stops. It is as if the other person got off the train, without warning, and got onto another one going in another direction. The discussion comes to a screeching halt because the other side has appealed to a position that can no longer be subjected to common terms of reason. They have made the leap of faith—in some traditions called the "God trick"—to a place impervious to earthly reason. It is a matter of their faith that an unerring principle, a belief system, an ancient text can be called upon uncondition- ally to support their side. There can be no appeal. How We Got Started This collection came together serendipitously shortly after September 11, 2001, when two of us were discussing the rising paranoia that billowed out like toxic dust from the fall of the twin towers. In the aftermath of 9/11 and amid increased sensitivity to U.S. politics, our work as critical thinkers in the academy seemed more intense. We felt the soot and grittiness of the fall settle over us as we tried to define a space from which we could continue to critique hegemonic social practices, of which the complexities of U.S. foreign policy were one example. The debate over what had happened in the U.S. was so polarized that it was hard to say anything without seeming to side with either the destructive acts of terrorism or the hysterical notion of a pristine, victimized United States. We had each been working independently on the issue of Christian fundamentalism and were alarmed by the influence of fundamentalist thought on public events. In the post-9/11 climate, little if any attention was being paid to the inroads Christian fundamentalism was making in local and international politics. The focus had become riveted on "Islamic fundamentalism" as the only form of extreme religious behaviour. Even though, for instance, Christian fundamentalist, Jerry Falwell had stated publicly that "America got what it deserved" (Saunders 2001: A2)— condemning the fact that gays and lesbians have increasing access to rights, that abortion is a woman's choice and other such "evidence" of the world in decay—the focus barely moved from "'Islamic fundamentalism." Our third editor joined us and expanded the discussion to other types of fundamentalism, for example, economic and Jewish.