Eighteen months can be a long time to wait for help.

That’s how long women seeking help after a sexual assault currently have to wait for counselling through WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre. The organization is calling on the province to increase funding for services for sexual assault survivors.

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“The waitlist exists because we don’t have the funding to be able to see the survivors right away,” says Sambriddhi Nepal, manager of fund development. “The lack of services and the waitlist is not our responsibility, the government at one time took responsibility for that and then shirked their responsibility so it’s really not on us, it’s really on the government to change their funding structure.”

The list is currently at 18 months, but last year it was as high as two years. A fundraising push last fall brought it down to the current level.

WAVAW (Women Against Violence Against Women) has been in operation since 1982, but the waitlist for counselling is a newer phenomenon.

Until about a dozen years ago, the centre had enough funding for all its services, there were enough counsellors for anyone that needed it and the organization could cover all its basic costs — such as rent, heat and electricity.

“Twelve years ago, under the previous Liberal government, we experienced big funding cuts to our core funding,” Nepal says, adding that the decrease in funds jeopardized the organization.

“We didn’t know if we’d survive, and around that time, historically, many social service e organizations in Vancouver and in B.C. in general closed their doors.”

Since then WAVAW has had to fundraise to keep its doors open.

The organization does receive about $360,000 annually through the province’s community safety and crime prevention branch, which funds two counsellor positions and three victim services staff. The centre has also received a total of $235,000 in civil forfeiture funding since 2011 for various projects. Getting that funding, however, is not guaranteed, and it must be applied for on an annual basis.

“It costs time and money to make those applications possible,” Nepal says.

The organization has an annual budget of nearly $1.8 million, which is largely maintained by fundraising.

“Fundraising should be a means for us to be innovative and provide things we wouldn’t otherwise be able to provide, it shouldn’t be the way for us to keep our doors open,” Nepal says.

“It’s really important to stress that the amount of money we’ve been given hasn’t changed substantially to reflect the increase in service pressures,” she says. “More people than ever are seeking our services, and it’s evidenced by our 18-month waitlist for counselling services, and the fact that our victim services staff have about 100 files each that they’re working on.”

WAVAW is the city’s only specialized rape crisis centre.

“Our work can be summarized in two difference actions that we take,” Nepal said. “We support survivors and we shift society.”

To shift society, the organization has an educational outreach program. It works with teachers, students and service providers to “shift cultures,” Nepal says.

“We’re trying to bring to the forefront that we live in rape culture and then ask people to be active participants in changing that.”

To support survivors, WAVAW offers a variety of different services. The most prominent, Nepal says, is the 24-hour crisis and information line where sexual assault victims can get immediate support and information. The organization helps women access the medical and legal systems, and offers both one-on-one and group counselling.

It’s the one-on-one sessions that have a lengthy wait list.

“There are services available that you can access right away. That includes things like hospital accompaniment or support if you are reporting to police or filing third party report, those things can be accessed right away,” she says. “Support groups are also available right away but the unfortunate thing is support groups don’t work for everybody. And every survivor picks a different way to handle their healing journey and it’s really important that we make space for survivors that really want to access the one-to-one counselling.”

Nepal describes the difference between group and one-on-one counselling using the analogy of a backpack.

“The backpack represents that trauma that you’ve experienced or the healing that you need to do,” she says. “At the victim services program, they support you to patch up any tears that are in your backpack for you to really be able to carry that backpack around. The counselling program really helps you to take the backpack off, open the backpack, look at what’s inside and rearrange the things that are in there for you to be able to carry it lightly, more efficiently, to the best of your ability.”

The thing about taking off the backpack, she adds, is that it takes time.

“You need to be able to develop a relationship with the person who’s your counsellor and survivors should have the time and the ability to access that in a way that feels good for them.”

It’s hiring the counsellors that adds to WAVAW’s budget.

“It’s really important that people who do this kind of really important, really transformative, healing work for survivors are compensated for their time,” she says. “In our opinion that’s not an option for us to be able to just suddenly bring volunteers or ask that trained, professional counsellors volunteer their time to provide services that they really should be being paid for.”

Nepal says the organization would need to hire five or six counsellors to completely eliminate the wait list.

“For every extra counsellor that we’re able to have, we’re able to reduce our waitlist by nearly five months. It’s really quite significant if we’re able to have extra counsellors but it does cost quite a bit of money to have them.”

The list is always in flux, she says. It might go down by five or six clients in one go and then another 10 new clients will come in that same month.

And there is a lot more attention on sexualized violence these days. Nepal says things such as the Jian Gomeshi and Harvey Weinstein cases, and social media campaigns such as #metoo, #beenrapedneverreported and #yesallwomen have helped increase WAVAW’s visibility.

“It means more people are calling us,” she says. “So for every couple of people that we’re able to move off the wait list there’s many more that are coming on.”

As service providers, WAVAW is left wondering, “Ok, what’s next? Is the provincial government going to respond to this wave of survivors coming forward?”

For its part, in November the Ministry of Public Safety provided $5 million in one-time funding to “enhance front-line services and address waitlists.”

The amount allocated to each service provider that has a contract with the ministry, including WAVAW, was 12.8 per cent of the current contract (which in WAVAW’s case is $360,000) or $5,000, whichever was greater.

“In addition, the ministry is currently exploring options for strategic investments that will build on work underway to strengthen the services and supports currently provided and address service demands,” the ministry said in an email to the Courier.

Nepal says one-time or program specific funding is not working for WAVAW.

“We believe that the government should fund social service organizations fully, in order to provide consistent, reliable, sustainable services to community members,” she says.

“Project funding means that we start at zero every year and work our way up to our nearly 1.8 million dollar budget every year. That’s unacceptable.”

@JessicaEKerr

jkerr@vancourier.com