CFS Programs

The WomanHaven Shelter	The Center Against Domestic Violence
The WomanHaven Thrift Store	The Anger Management Groups
Outreach Services	The Youth and Family Advocacy Project
Educational Services	Transitional Living
The Domestic Violence Resource Center	The Mentor Program
The Garden Project

Safety was the first concern of WomanHaven’s founding members, and Shelter was the first service we offered. Safety is still the primary concern; whatever services we have added since 1977 have been designed to be complementary to the safety of the women, men and their children who are living in violent situations.

The WomanHaven Shelter is available to women clients and their children who have no other option but to come to us for help. We will also secure shelter for any man who comes to us for services, but we do not have s shelter for men within the Center for Family Solutions programs.

Once in Shelter, a woman and her children are afforded a wide range of services provided by our organization and from other organizations in the community as well; we transport our clients to all the service sites they need, Referrals are made to the Imperial Valley Housing Authority, to educational and training programs, to parenting classes and job skill development workshops. We have available counseling services, legal services, and advocacy services within our own organization. Any service which would be helpful is provided by us or we find someone else to provide it. Support groups, peer counseling and complete case management services are offered.

The Children’s Program is a very special part of our Shelter services. At the Betty Young School, the childrens’ environment is filled with love and a sense of accomplishment. We also have a reading program in both Spanish and English at the Shelter; it is very important to impress upon the children that we value education and reading and writing skills, because many children come from homes where books are not available. Many social activities are included for them, too; we seek to provide a complete and well-rounded program for our children.

Each year since the Center Against Domestic Violence opened in 1985 we have served more and more people who are victims of domestic violence. In the past three years, the number of clients seeking help at the center has doubled.

At the Center, we provide food, clothing and household establishment assistance. We also offer counseling and education services, child care, referrals to social services, peer counseling groups, support services, and aftercare programs. We assist with appointments at Imperial County Mental Health, the Department of Social Services, the Housing Authority, and others. We also offer educational classes.

As is true at the Shelter, we always provide confidentiality and crisis services. Three years ago, our client count at the Center was 1,450; it jumped to 2,500 in 1995; to over 3,000 in 1996; topped 3,600 in 1997 and 4,500 in 1998! We are ahead of that pace in 1999. We are on track to serve more than 6,000 clients this year.

About seven percent of the clients who seek our services at the Center are men, to whom we provide all of the services that we provide to women, except for shelter services. We do find shelter for men through other shelter providers when this service is needed.

All of our administrative services are provided through the Center, including fund-raising, public education, reporting, violence prevention services, statistical recording, financial accounting and our outreach program.

The Center for Family Solutions Board of Directors believes the Thrift Store must sustain itself because the donations given to us by individuals and service clubs in the Valley are given to provide essential services to victims of family violence. The Thrift Store does not make enough money to contribute substantially to the CFS programs, but it does sustain itself, and the Board believes that as long as it provides the wide range of services to our clients and to the community that it does, is should exist.

The WomanHaven Thrift Store provides free clothing for our clients and their children, as well as helping them to set up households, if they want to do so. In addition, we serve others in the community through the vouchers that we distribute to all the churches and our assistance to people in special government training programs such as CALWORKS and agencies such as Child Protective Services. The WomanHaven Thrift Store is fortunate to have been adopted by organizations in the VaIley, and even in San Diego, including the Women Studies Association of San Diego State University and the SCOLLOPS. We also pick up perishable foods, such as bread and other donations, to distribute to people in need at the thrift store. We believe our store does contribute to filling some real needs in the community.

The Anger Management Groups are classes offered in English and Spanish for men and women who are batterers of their spouses, of their children, or recognize their unhealthy reactions to anger and seek to improve their communication skills.

Our Anger Management Program is the only certified batterer’s treatment program in Imperial County and employs an educational curriculum, which challenges the beliefs of those who use violence to control others. Its curriculum creates a process in which dialogue provides an opportunity through lectures, classes, videos, role-plays, exercises, and group discussions for men and women to think critically and reflectively about their use of violence in relationships. It consists of themes, which include nonviolence, nonthreatening behavior, support and trust, honesty and accountability, sexual respect, partnerships, parenting without violence, and negotiation and fairness.

We offer five English speaking men’s groups, four Spanish speaking men’s groups, one bilingual women’s group in El Centro and one English speaking men’s group in Brawley. Soon, we will offer groups in Calexico.

Statistics gathered by San Diego County’s district attorney’s office reveal that 98% of the people who successfully complete this 52-session program do not batter again.

The Center for Family Solutions Outreach Services programs are comprehensive and are available to all our clients whether they have been clients in the WomanHaven Shelter or in the Center Against Domestic violence. We offer assistance in independent household establishment, ongoing support groups for all clients and former clients (anyone is welcome) at sites in Calexico, at the Shelter, in El Centro, Winterhaven, and Brawley. Support groups are also available to our male clients. The Outreach Groups or Peer Counseling Groups, provide an opportunity for men and women to meet to discuss whatever they like and seek information and support from each other and from our staff.

CFS also provides ongoing support services in the way of clothing from our Thrift Store and food baskets for those who need continuing assistance.

The CFS Youth and Family Advocacy Project grew out of the Teen Anger Management Groups and our long-term Teen Dating Violence Prevention Program, begun in 1988.

We were able to begin the Anger Management Classes for youth through a portion of a grant from United Way of Imperial County in 1996, and initiated classes in the Juvenile Detention Facility at the Imperial County Probation Department, the Center Against Domestic Violence and the Kelley Home. In early 1997, we received one of 13 grants from the California Department of Health Services to enlarge and sustain the classes, now called the Youth and Family Advocacy Project. This has enabled us to bring classes to youth in public school sites throughout the Valley and at Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo, at Healthy Start sites, and at junior and senior high schools in Calipatria, Westmorland, Brawley, Hoitville, and Calexico. We conducted an eight-week series of classes for freshmen at Central Union High in the fall of 1998.

In connection with youth classes offered, we have been able to provide parenting workshops to the parents of 7th and 8th grade youth. The workshops are designed to enhance parenting skills at a time when their children are entering adolescence, and to make them aware of the curriculum content of the anger management classes their children receive.

Most women who seek shelter because they are in battering relationships have a very basic education, little job experience, few resources, and typically, three children under the age of six years old to care for; clearly, most women who are victims have no choice other than to return to the batterrer and hope he/she will not abuse again. Since abuse is a pattern of learned behavior, this hope is almost always unrealistic. Without any education, the women cannot provide an adequate living for themselves and their children. Clients not only in the Imperial Valley, but all across the country, relate that with the minimum wage job they qualify for they must choose between food and diapers or child care, they cannot fill all their needs. They must return and risk being battered again.

If the batterer is willing to enroll in the Anger Management Program, he/she is likely to learn some skills which will help him/her to change the battering behavior pattern, and this is the ideal situation — to preserve the family and end the violence. The Center for Family Solutions began an Educational Services Program for our clients in the Spring of 1997, which included four classes: ESL, Computer Skills, Independent Living Skills a variety of helpful topics including: budgeting, money management, job seeking skills, health, nutrition, self-esteem, and together with the Child Abuse Prevention Council, Parenting classes. In 1998, we added advanced computer skills and bookkeeping. These classes are designed to lay the ground work on which to build better skills which will lead to greater independence and improved job prospects.

The Center for Family Solutions’ Transitional Living program was introduced in the spring of 1997. Since 1977, CES has operated the WomanHaven emergency shelter for women and their children who are victims of violence. On a space available basis, we also accept women and their children who are homeless for reasons other than that they are battered. By definition, an emergency shelter provides services for a maximum of 179 days. While many services and workshops have been provided with the six month time, we believe that those women who are interested will benefit from an opportunity to move to a longer term Transitional shelter, wher they can take advantage of the opportunity to achieve an academic goal which might help them become self-supportive.

Residents moved into our first Transition Home in October of 1997. We received notification of funding from HUD late in 1997, which enabled us to add five additional transitional facilities in 1998. Now, in 1999, we have transitional facilities in El Centro, Holtville and Imperial.

The Domestic Violence Resource Center consists of a reading room equipped with books, articles, and tapes concerning family and relationship violence and related issues. The public uses the center and we especially welcome students who are researching family and relationship topics.

Regrettably, violence in relationships often begins when couples first start dating. On the school campuses in the Imperial Valley, there exists verbal abuse, stalking, and even physical abuse. Members of the CES staff take every opportunity and accept every invitation to speak to young people about relationships. Many young people are interested in the subject, because everyone knows someone who is or has experienced some sort of relationship violence. Each year, many young people come to do senior internships at the WomanHaven Shelter or at CFS. We hope to empower young people with knowledge about the subject and services available to help them and their colleagues.

The Center for Family Solutions started a mentor program for the children who have been in shelter in 1998. These children are matched with an adult companion/role model that can provide guidance and spend time with them, encouraging them to develop their interests and to devote their energies to productive behaviors.

In families where abuse exists, children are being physically battered about fifty percent of the time. Even where physical abuse of children does not occur, the children are being psychologically abused simply by the fact that they are living in the midst of violence. Psychologists who work with children tell us that growing up in an abusive environment is something that children never forget, and something which will affect them throughout their lives. To provide a trusted companion with whom one can talk about the things that are going on in their lives is the objective of the CFS Mentor Program.

The Center for Family Solutions Garden Project will begin at all of our shelter sites in May 1999. In consultation with a Master Gardener and a nutritionist, we will add a class in our Educational Program to teach the women who enter our Emergency and Transitional Shelters about gardening for independence and nutrition for the improved health of their families and themselves.

A second very important element of the Gardening Project is aimed at the development of the children in Shelter. Through the years, Center for Family Solutions staff has observed in their work with children that often those children who come to our shelters have been living, and therefore, are themselves unable to nurture. We hope through teaching them to garden we will develop their skills in nurturing to enable them to become well-adjusted adults and good parents and to nurture their own future families.