Financial wellness is an important component of overall family wellbeing. When parents and caregivers have financial knowledge, skills and confidence, they are better able to improve quality of life for themselves, their families, and their communities.
We work to make financial wellness programming more accessible—especially for individuals who have experienced trauma. Working with our partners, we also promote free services that help families access benefits and credits which they are eligible for, and start saving for their children’s education.
The SAFE Women (Safety and Financial Empowerment for Women) project addressed the need for trauma- and violence-informed approaches (TVIA) in financial literacy programming by developing the SAFE Women online course. This course helps financial literacy educators understand and apply trauma and violence-informed approaches when supporting women.
This project was funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada.
National research has shown that many existing financial literacy programs are not accessible for many women living on low incomes, especially women who have experienced trauma. Utilizing trauma- and violence-informed approaches in financial literacy programming will increase women’s sense of safety, control and resilience—as well as decrease the risk of unintentionally re-traumatizing program participants.
With support from CIBC, we are building relationships between selected family support centres and financial literacy educators who have completed our SAFE Women course. We are also supporting the centres and educators to host financial wellness seminars for women, to help women improve their financial literacy knowledge, skills and confidence—all of which leads to achieving financial wellbeing.
If you’d like more information on any of our projects, please contact us at info@familiescanada.ca.