Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence

Improving funding & public policy this year the Coalition rallied advocates, survivors, and community members to amplify this message: especially in light of the social and economic consequences of the pandemic, racism, and gender inequity, survivors of Gender-Based Violence need more support and options than ever before. In 2022 we: mobilized representatives from member programs to advocate for increased emergency and on-going funding to address the skyrocketing demand for services for survivors. Our advocacy efforts at the local level resulted in a 2.5 million increase in seattle and king county funding for survivor services, and our participation in state and national advocacy efforts prevented devastating cuts to existing funding streams. This means that thousands more survivors in our region will be able to get the support they need to escape and heal from abuse and Violence. Continued to advance the ongoing work to build meaningful alternatives to the criminal legal system, including publicly advocating for funding for the king county regional peacekeepers collective and increased seattle funding for community-based alternatives to public safety. Throughout these efforts, we emphasized the fact that survivors of sexual and domestic Violence need alternatives that are specifically tailored to the unique harms they've experienced and the ongoing danger that they face. Connecting within and across disciplines survivors of sexual and domestic Violence need their communities and service providers to be coordinated and working together to respond to Violence and address the gender, racial, and economic disparities that drive Violence and abuse. Some of our collective efforts towards our vision of safe and just communities in 2022 included: the family law work group served the critical role of being the main conduit for information flow between the court, gbv advocates, and attorneys, particularly in regards to the statutory changes to the definition of domestic Violence enacted on july 1, 2022. This significant change warranted multiple discussions with the advocacy community, family law attorneys, court personnel, and third-party family law practitioners because of the inclusion of "coercive control" in the definition. We convened multiple sessions for gbv providers to weigh in on the king county regional homelessness authority's five-year plan in order to ensure that the plan serves the survivors experiencing homelessness and housing instability well. We convened regular meetings between dv housing providers and family emergency shelter providers to strengthen partnerships, coordinate services, and to provide a unified voice to funders and stakeholders. We continued significant coordination with other regional human service groups, including the seattle human services Coalition, the king county alliance for human services, and the seattle/king county Coalition on homelessness. We deepened the region's transformative justice and prevention work, connecting 30 survivor advocates and community members in a virtual "learning cohort" to learn about, practice, and integrate transformative and restorative justice principles and practices into their work. We continued to convene the cse collaborative, made up of four organizations who provide support and services to those engaged in the sex trades. We successfully organized an in person retreat that allowed us to deepen our understanding of each other's work and discuss strategies to better support our communities. We hosted a retreat for gbv directors to discuss and strategize embedding anti-racist principles in leadership work, both internally and organizationally. This led to planning and consultation later in the year for the gbv directors' group to continue the work into 2023. Equipping people with helpful information & tools we provide training and resources Coalition members, other professionals, and community members so that they can provide effective services and supports that center survivor well-being. In 2022: we implemented the lessons and feedback from the first six months of the newly launched domestic Violence housing coordinated entry system (dvchap) and made necessary changes to the housing assessment, the prioritization guidelines, and the case conferencing process. The process is now more accessible, more racially equitable, and better serves survivors from marginalized communities. This year 20+ different agencies engaged in the first full year of the process, submitting a total of approximately 332 assessments into over 40 housing program openings between january - december of 2022. We trained over 120 advocates on the dv housing assessment and process throughout the year, and provided training on the intersection of dv and homelessness to several hundred homelessness service providers at a dozen distinct agencies and entities, including the king county regional homelessness authority. We convened an annual community meeting for the "new day" Gender-Based Violence resource database to gather feedback and to commemorate the first year of its existence. The database has been successful in connecting gbv providers to updated services faster. With strong collaboration between dvchap and the regional dvhopeline, dvchap housing assessments can now be completed and submitted via the dvhopeline. We coordinated training for more than 150 mental health, chemical dependency, domestic Violence, and sexual assault professionals throughout king county about strengthening therapeutic responses to domestic Violence, connections between gbv/mh/substance use, and offered strategies to collaborate across fields for deeper impact. In 2022, funding was targeted at trainings on how to better serve bipoc survivors in marginalized communities. Topics included interrupting anti-blackness in the anti- Violence movement, working with bipoc and lgbtq++ survivors, important considerations when prescribing psychotropic medications to bipoc survivors. We helped ensure that dv programs were informed and could easily access the newly available emergency housing vouchers through the department of housing and urban development (hud) by convening gbv providers, disseminating information, and acting as a mediator between the two systems. We facilitated workshops related to significant statutory changes that went into effect in 2022 re: the addition of "coercive control" to our statutory definition of domestic Violence, how to identify and articulate coercive control in the context of protection orders and parenting plans, and the importance of screening for dv early on in every family law case. We provided multiple training to over 200 attorneys, advocates, mental health professionals, and other professionals involved in family law cases through the Washington state and king county bar associations, the institute on Violence, abuse, and trauma, and other agencies on the importance of consistent and early screening for domestic Violence in child custody-related cases, the impact of domestic Violence and family court on survivors and their children, and how to support survivors engaged in custody matters.