What We Do
This section of our 2023-2024 Annual Impact Report offers a snapshot of what we do, from our range of programs and services, to outreach and community collaborations.
People We Served Across all areas of SACE
While the impact of community events and outreach work can’t always be captured in terms of the number of people we reached or supported, this chart illustrates the number of people we served in the 2023-2024 year, and the range of ways we supported the Edmonton community through our range of services.
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Supporting Communities Across Alberta
SACE delivers online and in-person education and support services for people in the Edmonton and surrounding region, and across Alberta.
Some of the communities we served this year: Edmonton, Sherwood Park, St. Albert, Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation, Barrhead, Beaumont, Devon, Enoch (kitaskinaw), Edson, Evansburg, Garrison Military Base, Hinton, Leduc, Morinville, Pigeon Lake, Swan Hills, Warburg, Westlock, and Wetaskiwin.
Support
Justice Connections Stories
In addition to our ongoing work on case reviews in cooperation with Edmonton Police Service, our Clinical Directors have been engaged in reciprocal professional development opportunities with EPS Sexual Assault Section.
These sessions provide an opportunity to collaborate bidirectionally, so that clients receive appropriate referrals to SACE, and clear information is provided about EPS services in return. They also foster capacity building within our community for better identifying and responding to trauma. The specific focus continues to be on youth, as we know that a youth’s first point of contact with EPS can be pivotal in determining how their police and court process proceeds, as well as how they navigate those systems throughout their lives.
In early spring 2023, we facilitated a session for probation officers with the Government of Alberta corrections department. Our Institutional Support and Education teams engaged in successful outreach with the Canadian Armed Forces too. We facilitated a customized question-and-answer session for professionals associated with the Sexual Misconduct Support and Resource Centre, and engaged in a series of consultations and resource review for the Atlas Institute for Veterans and Families to create four resources about military sexual trauma. We also connected with Guthrie School, an elementary/junior high on Garrison base just north of Edmonton, to facilitate two professional development sessions to teachers and staff, as well as multiple youth sessions into spring 2024.
Counselling
Collaboration Story: kickstand
SACE was approached by Kickstand in 2022 to collaborate on an exciting new initiative: a youth integrated services hub. This year, the project began to take form with a physical site set to open in early 2025. This hub itself will offer a broad scope of free services to youth ages 12-15 in our community, including access to medical and mental health services along with employment, housing, peer, and cultural supports. SACE has committed to be an onsite partner offering counselling to youth impacted by sexual violence when the physical location opens. Our SACE Clinical Director, Child & Youth Services has been engaged in ongoing meetings with other collaborative service delivery partners and attending teachings provided by Bent Arrow focused on bringing the partners together in a good way.
Education & Consultation
Collaboration Story: Supporting Arts Communities
In spring 2023, our Institutional Support team had the pleasure of working with the Edmonton Poetry Festival, providing feedback on their safer spaces policy and creating a customized session to support their board’s ongoing efforts to create safer spaces in Edmonton’s arts community. This experience has also provided greater understanding for supporting other arts community organizations invested in safer spaces work.
We continued to support other arts communities with our bystander intervention training program this year too. In late spring 2023, we facilitated training for staff involved with Nextfest, an emerging arts festival. We also provided training to Purple City Music Festival volunteers for the second year in a row. Finally, we celebrated the conclusion of our second online course with Fringe Theatre. This course was designed as a shortened follow-up, or “refresher” course for Fringe Festival artists, volunteers, and staff to help enhance their understanding and practice of consent. This course contained a range of customized content, including animated videos and nuanced practice scenarios. In early 2024, we were contacted by Fringe Theatre again to continue our collaborative partnership by facilitating both in-person and virtual bystander intervention training for their lead volunteers and staff. SACE deeply values our connections with Edmonton’s arts community and we are thrilled to be able to support so many organizations and initiatives within this community.
Outreach & Awareness
Through the distribution of the Rooted booklet for Indigenous communities, a growing number of organizations and community members appreciated and wanted more physical copies of SACE resources.
Education Story: Hockey Edmonton
Throughout the spring and summer, SACE dedicated significant time to researching and creating customized education content to support staff, coaches, board members, and parents affiliated with Hockey Edmonton, which governs and administrates minor hockey in Edmonton. The team faced the impressive challenge of crafting education on consent and sexual violence in sport, delivered to over 2,000 adults with varying roles. To accomplish this, we dedicated time to researching the nuances of consent and sexual violence in sport environments. We customized multiple presentations to deliver to Hockey Edmonton staff and board members and elite level coaches. For parents and all other tiers of coaches and support staff, we created and recorded a 90-minute podcast that delivers our education in a conversational format. Although Hockey Edmonton focuses on the sport of hockey, we purposefully diversified our research to include multiple sports environments so that we may take all the research and customized content and use it to support other sports organizations in the future. This was a major endeavor for our team that illustrates our ingenuity in creating and tailoring education, especially for different audience members.
Supporting Volunteers
The SACE Support & Information Line (SIL) and the northern hub of Alberta’s One Line for Sexual Violence were busy this past year. Operations of the lines continued to run smoothly with the help of over 50 support line volunteers, covering shifts every day of the week from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Volunteer Services program was pleased to graduate ten new volunteers onto the support lines in July, and another ten passed their readiness appraisals and joined the support team in November 2023. After 70 hours in training, these volunteers are prepared to listen, believe, and support folks who reach out via phone, text, or chat.
Volunteers need support too. Volunteer Services puts a lot of effort into making sure that the 80+ staff members and volunteers on the line are supported, trained, and enthusiastic about the vital work that they do. We strive for a culture of volunteer retention and care, providing monthly volunteer meetings with a variety of educational opportunities, refresher trainings, and support, as well as appreciation events, a newsletter, regular communication, ad hoc support, and engagement activities such as our new “book report” project that supports volunteers in reading sexual violence-related titles.
2023-2024 Counselling Groups
A major achievement of the counselling program was the relaunch of our counselling process groups. The clinical team at SACE has spent the past year updating and expanding group content to align with clinical best practices in group delivery, and to respond to feedback from previous participants and facilitators.
People were supported through a range of processing-based counselling groups and psychoeducation groups through the 2023-2024 year. SACE groups are delivered based on demand.
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Some of our 2023-2024 Collaborators & Partners
Alberta Sexual Assault Services (AASAS), Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters (ACWS), City of Edmonton, Canadian Armed Forces, Edmonton Community Legal Centre, Edmonton Police Services, Kickstand, University of Alberta, Centre for Sexuality, Next Gen Men, Metro Continuing Education, Catholic Social Services, Fruit Loop, Atlas Institute for Veterans and Families, Alberta Native Friendship Centres Association, REACH Edmonton
