King County Coalition Against Domestic Violence Programs
The Coalition leads, builds capacity, connects and informs:
Leads
The Coalition provides leadership on public policy efforts among local governments, criminal justice and community providers to end domestic violence. Our public policy and advocacy work promotes safe, just communities for all.
Builds Capacity
The Coalition supports and improves the ability of member programs to provide quality services, utilize best practices and engage in broader advocacy and social change activities. We facilitate collaboration among our members and give them access to resources and trainings that allow them to best serve survivors of domestic violence.
Connect
The Coalition brings together service providers from diverse fields, such as mental health and family law, in order to provide more comprehensive and sensitive services to survivors of domestic violence who face multiple barriers.
Inform
The Coalition raises public awareness about domestic violence in our communities. Raising awareness helps us to build support for efforts to prevent abuse and promote healthy and safe relationships.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
The Coalition's work has directly resulted in many positive changes in programs and policy that improve our community’s response to domestic violence. The Coalition has successfully advocated for increased public funding for a variety of services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, and has worked for improvements to laws and policies in the civil and criminal legal systems.
We celebrated a lot of successes in 2012:
- Our collaborative efforts resulted in over $5.5 million in new funding for critical human services in our region. Because of our successful advocacy, thousands of survivors of violence and abuse in King County will be able to access emergency housing, food, advocacy, legal assistance, and culturally appropriate services.
- Through our coordination of direct assistance funds, we helped over 800 families increase their economic and housing stability, improve their safety, and meet their basic needs.
- We provided hundreds of mental health and chemical dependency agencies and other professionals with tools and training to enhance the services they provide to survivors of abuse.
- We launched the LGBTQ Access project, establishing partnerships with six organizations to make significant improvements to increase access to services for LGBTQ survivors of crime.
The #1 need for the Coalition at this time is for funding to support our coalition building and advocacy activities. As our members face increasing demand for services in a time of decreasing resources, they are depending on us even more to keep them informed and connected, and to advocate on behalf of them and the thousands of women, children and men they help break free from violence and abuse.