IT’S UNITED WAY TIME

United Way kicked off its fundraising campaign on September 8 at the Westin Crown Center. It is now campaign time for companies and partnering United Way agencies. UW is working hard to make sure that agencies have the resources available to provide the critical services being offered in our area. Hope House is proud to be a partner agency with United Way and will work hard to ensure that the campaign is successful.

Hope House receives approximately 6% of our budget from United Way. This is through the allocation process and from those donors that designate their giving to our agency. It is imperative that the campaign is successful so that agencies like Hope House can continue to receive the crucial funding for our programs.

United Way has gone through many changes over the past couple of years and is truly committed to making change happen in our community. The changes have been positive and thoughtful and will positively impact our community.

If you work for a company that does a United Way campaign, congratulations - you are making a difference. If you are not, please consider starting a workplace campaign.  United Way makes it easy, and agencies like Hope House are available to visit your workplace and present information about our programs and what being a partner with United Way means for our agency. 

Safe Family Coalition

Domestic violence and child abuse often occur together. Before 2001 there were many agencies that addressed each of these problems as separate issues. At times, these agencies seemed to work against each other, potentially putting women and children in greater danger of harm.

To address this problem, the Jackson County Safe Family Coalition (SFC) was formed. Their mission is to provide a coordinated community response to child abuse and domestic violence that will provide safety, enhance well-being, and provide stability for children and families.

SFC is made up of the many agencies that are involved when domestic violence and child abuse occur together:

• child protection workers
• adult and family courts
• county and city prosecutors
• judges
• domestic violence shelters
• law enforcement
• probation and parole
• social workers
• mental health services providers

SFC has challenged all of the participating agencies to look at our systems and change operations with the SFC mission as a guide. The best way to keep children safe is to keep the non-offending parent safe. This is accomplished by:

• Holding the perpetrator accountable for their actions.
• Providing meaningful help, support, and services for families who are experiencing child abuse and domestic violence.
• Providing legal interventions and services that stop violence and abuse.

SFC has committed to educate agencies and their staffs about resources that are available when they recognize cases of domestic violence with child abuse. SFC also seeks to engage the community by creating awareness about the need to provide a comprehensive array of services that will respond to the unique strengths and concerns of families.

Hope House has been a proud partner of this coalition and will continue coming to the table to keep children and the non-offending parent safe. We are very grateful that so many partners have joined us to make a difference in our communities.

For more information about the Safe Family Coalition, please visit their website http://www.jcsafefamily.org/.

Survivor Treatment Group

Hope House offers a 12 week Survivor Treatment Group to battered women who are out of their abusive relationships for at least three months and attempting to put their lives back together. 

Abusers’ tactics of verbal and emotional abuse reinforce a negative perception of self. The victim begins to see herself as her abuser defines her. She loses her self-identity. The focus of the Survivor Treatment Group is the recovery of a sense of self. We help the client to define her own beliefs, validate her own feelings and develop a healthy regard for her self worth. This allows the client to transform herself from victim to survivor to thriver.

There are five topics addressed with two weeks devoted to each topic. Participants explore issues in their own lives relating to the topic discussed.

Week 1: “I’m Okay, You’re Okay.” A look at power and control in abusive relationships.  Why does it happen? How does it happen?

Week 3: “How Did this Happen to Me?” A look at our own personalities. Where did we get our life ‘tapes’? How did my ‘tapes’ allow me to remain in an abusive relationship?

Week 5: “Whose Fence is this Anyway?”  Establishing healthy boundaries. A look at what boundaries really are and what role they play in establishing and maintaining healthy relationships.

Week 7: “The Secret to it All – Loving Myself.” A look at self-esteem. How do I get there? Tools to help me stop beating myself up.

Week 9: “Letting the World Know I Love Myself.” A look at assertiveness and tools for healthy communication.

Week 11: “Putting it all Together – Letting it all Go.” Putting all the previous information together to let go of the past and start over with power in the present moment.

To get more information about joining this group, call our hotline at 816-461-HOPE (4673).

A Successful Hope & All That Jazz

Hope and All That Jazz took place on Saturday night at the Muehlebach Hotel. It was a huge achievement, bringing in around $327,000 that will help fund vital programs that help women and children affected by domestic violence.

It was a wonderful evening with people filling the hallways and the ballroom to support Hope House. The silent and live auctions were fantastic. We had a committee that worked extremely hard on securing new and interesting items that were a hit with our guests.

We were fortunate to have Mary Hunter share her story of the road to recovery that took place in her family after her daughter was a victim of domestic violence. She shared how difficult it was to believe that it could happen to her family - a family that was full of love and self esteem and “ordinary” in so many ways - not one that could be impacted by domestic violence.

What she learned through her process is that domestic violence can happen to anyone, including her daughter. How wonderful to hear such an uplifting story and know that Hope House services made a difference in the lives of Mary’s family.

I am grateful for all of the hard work of our co-chairs, Bill and Liz Downey, and Chuck and Susie Caisley. They worked so hard to secure sponsors and to introduce Hope House to new people who have become our friends. We couldn’t have done it without them or our Board of Directors.

My thanks to everyone who had a hand in making this event such a huge success.

Please mark your calendars for next year, August 20th, for another wonderful Hope and All That Jazz. We would love to see you there.

The Hope House BridgeSPAN Program

Health care providers are in a unique position to help victims of abuse if they know how to detect domestic violence (DV) and provide victims with referrals and support.  It only makes sense, then, to reach out to survivors in area hospitals. This is what the Hope House BridgeSPAN Program aims to do. 

Through the BridgeSPAN program, Hope House and other area DV programs provide a coordinated effort to address DV as a serious healthcare issue in 46 hospitals and clinics throughout the Kansas City metro area. BridgeSPAN offers patients with on-site advocacy including support, safety planning, and access to ongoing DV services including those for mental health. It also offers training for medical personnel, and protocol development and maintenance.

Recently, our BridgeSPAN Coordinator provided training to new employees of a local hospital about how to screen patients for DV and what resources to offer when patients screen positive for abuse. Later that evening, a nurse who went through the training called the hotline to obtain services for herself. She had been in an abusive marriage for several years and had never reached out for help. 

The nurse told the hotline operator that after hearing the trainer talk about what DV entails and what survivors go through, she suddenly realized that the trainer was describing her own life. That nurse was able to speak with the hotline operator about a plan for leaving her abusive relationship and she entered services shortly after.  

(Photo credit: Aaron Lindberg)

Hope & All That Jazz - August 21

Would you like to stay in a fully furnished villa for 7 days in Hawaii, or enjoy Carrie Underwood in luxury with 16 tickets in the KCP&L Sprint Center suite?

Well, our largest fundraiser of the year is just around the corner (Saturday, August 21) and those items will be available at the event in the live auction. This event is so much fun and so important to our mission. We are expecting over 600 people at this event where we will have dinner and enjoy the silent and live auction.

Take a sneak peek at some of the auction items we’ll have available by checking out our Auction Flipbook.

We'll have so many other wonderful items too, including jewelry, children’s items, artwork, wine and many, many other beautiful things to bid on. It is so much fun to watch the guests get into bidding wars with each other over their favorite items!

The funds raised from this event support our daily operations, allowing us to provide life-saving and critical services to over 10,000 people every year who are impacted by domestic violence.

This year we will move across the street to the Muehlebach Hotel. I know that the new venue will be perfect and the evening will be a success. We are still taking reservations, so if you don't have your tickets yet, it isn’t too late. You can purchase tickets at our website, or call Libby at 816-257-9334.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Construction Update

The Hope House Independence campus is full of activity with construction happening all around us. The renovation to the living area of shelter is complete and the clients have moved back in. The transformation is amazing.

The meeting space for intakes is now private and we have room for the children to play separate from mom but yet still visible through a glass wall. The little ones won’t have to be exposed to the questions and the responses but will still feel safe since mom is right there in their sight. There is expanded storage and a better flowing work space for the staff.

The daycare playground will be the next project started. We will expand the playground to have a separate space for the really young kids to be able to play and crawl around without worry about the bigger kids tripping over them. We will be installing a new playground structure and a trike trail for the little ones to ride their bikes in a safe enclosed space.

Work will continue on the new Therapy building with the anticipated completion date at the beginning of 2011.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our capital campaign that has allowed this work to happen. It is a gift that we are extremely grateful for and will treasure always. We are committed to providing quality services to those in need and the work in this campaign will assist us in doing that in an environment that lends itself to the healing process.