Intimate Partner Violence-Involved Immigrant Men and Families at the Intersection of Criminal Justice and Youth Protection

Background and Purpose: In Canada, immigrant families experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) often navigate complex interactions between siloed criminal justice and child welfare systems. These families are especially vulnerable given the link between access to services and immigration status, and prevalence of cultural bias (often implicit), which is exacerbated for members of allophone racialized communities. There is an urgent need to better understand the unique risks for immigrant families and their interactions with IPV-related carceral systems to provide culturally safe trauma-informed language accessible interventions to prevent future IPV. Prevention efforts and interventions situated in community-based services may be especially effective due to shared cultural values and linguistically relevant resources. This research links our collaboration with a community clinic serving IPV-involved immigrant men (primarily referred through criminal justice) with a secondary analysis of a large Quebec child welfare database. By synthesizing findings from two service points, our research seeks to identify factors associated with IPV-involved immigrant families to inform culturally- and trauma-responsive interventions to promote transformative justice.

Methods: The study includes data from a community IPV clinic and Quebec youth protection agencies’ incident reports. Clinic data were aggregated from initial interviews with men conducted in 2016-2023 (N=457). We created a subset (N=5,218) of IPV-involved incidents from a 2014 Quebec study of youth protection agency-reported incidents (N=31,529). Within this subsample, we created a language-based proxy variable for immigrant identity. Data analysis focused on sociodemographics, IPV incident details, and systems referrals. Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics and logistic regression to explore factors relevant to IPV-involved immigrant men and families.

Findings: In the clinic sample (N=457), 163 (35.7%) men identified as immigrants and 45 (9.9%) were referred by youth protection. In a subsample (N=109) from 2021-2023, 61 (56%) identified as allophones. In the 2014 youth protection incident data (N=31,529), 5,218 (16.5%) of reported incidents were related to IPV. These incidents included one (N=470; 1.5%) or two (N=191; 0.6%) allophone parents. Of these incidents 1.1% (N=344) included one parent who spoke neither English nor French and in 0.5% (N=158) neither parent spoke English or French. The presence of one allophone parent increased the likelihood of an incident being substantiated by 76% (OR = 1.76, 95% CI: 1.13 - 2.74, p = .012). Both parents as allophones more than doubled the likelihood of an incident being substantiated (OR = 2.28, 95% CI: 0.997 - 5.215, p = .051). The presence of one parent who spoke neither English nor French more than tripled the likelihood of an incident being substantiated (OR = 3.576, 95% CI: 1.769 - 7.228, p < .001).

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings from the community clinic and youth protection data highlight the amplified risks immigrant and allophone families face. Yet, there are limited services which are family-focused, center cultural safety, trauma informed at the intersection of these two systems tailored to meet the needs of these families and prevent future IPV. We describe a simulation-based training program we are developing to increase culturally responsive services for transformative justice for immigrant families experiencing IPV.