Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence Programs
Our strategic plan's goals for the next five years:
- Unite our membership’s and survivors’ voices to shape public opinion and action;
- Advance excellent survivor advocacy and innovative programming that reflects the needs of all communities;
- Identify, nurture and sustain a diverse leadership for our movement;
- Intensify efforts to prevent domestic violence.
Here's an example of our creative, practical strategies: A staff member was trying to figure out how to dramatically improve how shelters actually shelter kids and adults. She visited around and gave out disposable cameras, asking them to take photos of their temporary home's positives and negatives. This led to rich conversations, forming the basis for new promising practices on how to update or design shelters for personal dignity, parenting, and safety. We leveraged a small grant into a five-$ figure, in-kind donation from a local architecture firm. Together, we created a national online resource center called "Building Dignity" for DV programs, planners, and architects on promising practices in shelter design. As of December 2012, this website has gotten 87,000 hits.
One of our primary roles is to serve as a convener of time and space, so that DV survivors, their advocates, and allies come together to develop solutions to violence. Capacity building, collaboration, and building collective power are at the heart of our work. We work closely with domestic/sexual violence victim service providers, grassroots and professional groups, and institutions. We prioritize working with our peers in-state and nationally.
Here are two examples. First, we partner with the Attorney General, Department of Health and sexual/domestic violence survivor advocates to increase interventions and help for abused pregnant and parenting teens and adults. Second, in our "Crossing Borders" project for immigrant and refugee survivors, our 15 rural pilot sites are creating innovative, grassroots solutions to violence and sexual abuse on-the-job and at home with farmworkers.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
Just this year, our work has resulted in a New York Times front-page article and editorial on abusers' access to guns even when there is a protection order, as well as in-depth coverage by NBC. Your support helps us change public opinion about domestic violence, and advance changes in the law.
We are excited about the very promising results from our cutting edge work to help DV survivors keep or get into their own permanent housing. Evaluative data from our DV Housing First demonstration project shows that 90% of the 236 survivors served by Cohort 1 programs during first three years kept or got permanent housing because of the project. Survivors that maintain contact with DV advocates have an extremely high rate of housing retention—over 95%, 12 months after housing placement. 80% of the 400 survivors served by Cohort 2 programs (from 9/2011 through 3/2013) were able to retain or access permanent housing because of the project. The retention rate is high: 99% after six months of accessing housing and services and 98% after 12 months of accessing housing and services.
Our membership counts on WSCADV to be a unifying force, identify promising practices, build organizational capacity, and promote DV intervention and violence prevention.