Evaluation of Shepherds of Good Hope’s Women and Gender Diverse Services Program
About the Project
From top left clockwise: Tara McWhinney, Phil Nowotny, Zoey Feder, Adje van de Sande, Katherine Occhiuto
From 2017 to 2020, the Centre for Studies on Poverty and Social Citizenship (CSPSC) partnered with Shepherds of Good Hope to conduct an evaluation of their new Women and Gender Diverse Services program.
Research indicates that female and transgender individuals experience homelessness differently from men. Factors such as violence against women, trauma, survival sex, poverty and gender-based discrimination affect women in accessing homelessness resources.
Shepherds of Good Hope’s Women and Gender Diverse Services offer an innovative approach to shelter services with a gender and trauma-informed intensive case management program for chronically and episodically homeless women and transgender people.
From left clockwise: Phil Nowotny, Katharine Larose-Hebert, Zoey Feder, Tara McWhinney, Alicia Kalmanovitch, Sarah Johnston, Adje van de Sande
Clients work with a gender and trauma-focused case manager that is culturally sensitive to provide stabilization support and housing first services. Clients are also provided extra support through peer support worker services, working closely with women and gender diverse individuals who have previous lived experience of homelessness.
The goal of the program evaluation was to determine if the new Women and Gender Diverse Services is more effective than the existing Shepherds of Good Hope program in transitioning women and transgender people into long-term secure housing.
Research Team
Adje van de Sande
Principal Investigator
Katherine Occhiuto
Research Assistant
Tara McWhinney
Research Assistant
Alicia Kalmanovitch
Research Assistant
Jennifer Colpitts
Research Assistant
Final Recommendations
Our evaluation found that overall, the experiences of Shepherds clients, Peer Workers and employees were positive and the Women and Gender Diverse Services program offered a multitude of positive impacts, unique to the program design. Clients self-perception improved significantly over the course of program interventions.
The Research Team provided some final recommendations to enhance the impact of the Women and Gender Diverse Services program:
- Increase number of case workers within the WGD Program to support service users with housing
- Continue facilitating direct connections to community supports.
- Increase and continue to facilitate connections to ongoing mental health supports
- Increase number of case workers within the WGD Program to support service users with housing
