Thomas Breen photo
Esperina Stubblefield and Julie Johnson.
The city’s proposed new family justice center will not only make it easier for domestic violence victims to access legal help, housing assistance, childcare, and clinical and sexual assault services. It will also minimize the number of times victims have to share their stories and relive their traumatic experiences as they seek help.
That pitch was made by proponents of the city’s proposed new HOPE Family Justice Center of Greater New Haven during a Finance Committee workshop about the mayor’s proposed $547.1 million operating budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The five-hour budget workshop was held last week in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.
Julie Johnson, a former New Haven police captain who will manage the center, and Esperina Stubblefield, the director of the Umbrella Center for Domestic Violence Services, which will staff the center, made their case why the proposed family justice center deserves its $150,000 general fund allocation included in the mayor’s proposed budget.
They said BHcare, a North Haven-based nonprofit which is the parent organization for the Umbrella Center, plans to move its current East Haven site to a new home in downtown New Haven to provide the Elm City with its own “one-stop shop” for domestic violence victim services. Both Johnson and Stubblefield work for BHcare.
Although they did not disclose any specific downtown addresses they are considering for the move, Johnson and Stubblefield said the $150,000 requested in the budget would cover the cost of building renovations and increased rent at the center’s new New Haven home. They said the center will have 9.5 full-time-equivalent staff positions filled by BHcare employees. The cost of operations will be funded primarily by money from the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence and from a three-year federal Department of Justice (DOJ) grant.
BHcare currently has offices in North Haven, Ansonia and Branford.
Johnson.
Most of Johnson and Stubblefield’s presentation before the alders focused less on how the New Haven-budgeted money will be spent and more on the services that the family justice center hopes to colocate under one roof for victims of domestic violence in New Haven and the surrounding area.
“A family justice center takes the best services that you already have for victims and puts them all in one place,” Johnson said. “We have a victim-centered, survivor-driven philosophy.”
She said there are 100 family justice centers around the world. The Center for Family Justice in Bridgeport is the only one in Connecticut.
She said the center will provide a place for a victim to talk to an advocate, plan for her safety, interview with a police officer, meet with a prosecutor, and get information about shelter of transportation.
‘The goal of the family justice center is that a survivor would come and get all the services they need on one visit,” she said.
She gave an example of a hypothetical woman named Donna who lives on Quinnipiac Avenue.
If Donna gets in a fight with her abusive husband and gets punched in the face in front of her child, then a number of things happen next:
Donna calls the police. The police come and arrest her husband. The next day, Donna has to travel to the Elm Street courthouse for the arraignment and to talk to a court-based advocate. Johnson said that one in four New Haven families do not have their own cars, and so Donna would likely have to catch the 8:44 bus, assuming the bus is running on time, to get downtown by her 9:15 appointment.
At court, she’ll talk with the advocate from the Umbrella Center in their cramped office space or in the hallway of the courthouse with her daughter sitting on the floor besides her. Then she has to take the bus back to Quinnipiac Avenue, getting home by 12:30, with neither her nor her daughter having had any time to eat.
Subsequent required visits to the Department of Children and Families (DCF) or to the Yale Child Study Center could drive up the total commuting time for Donna for this one incident to upwards of 25 hours on public transportation, Johnson said.
“What we know about domestic violence victims,” she said, “is that when they become frustrated with the system, oftentimes they stop going to their appointments.”
Johnson said that BHcare has already secured pledges of partnership and support from the New Haven, East Have, Yale and Southern and Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) police departments, New Haven Legal Assistance, and the State Attorney’s office, and several other local service agencies.
She said the primary services provided at the family justice center will be advocacy and legal services, housing assistance, on-site childcare, opportunities to meet with police officers and talk with prosecutors, bilingual services, connections to clinical and sexual assault services, and a trauma-informed meeting space.
“We believe that being downtown,” Johnson said, “while being more expensive, it’s in the best interest of the victims and the social service agencies to be able to collaborate effectively.”
Dolores Colon.
Hill Alder Dolores Colon asked what a “trauma-informed meeting space” was, and why that was necessary to have at the center.
Esperina Stubblefield responded that the center will provide a space where everything from the staff interactions to the design of the lighting and the furniture works against “re-victimizing” the victim, allowing her to relax and know that issues will be addressed without having to constantly revisit the traumatic even.
“A lot of the individuals have to tell their story over and over again,” she said. “And after a while, they get tired of telling their story. But with the family justice center, when they come in and speak with an intake person, they’re telling their story one time, and that person is taking the information and directing it to whomever that she needs services from. She doesn’t have to keep on telling it over and over again.”
Tyisha Walker-Myers.
West River Alder and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers praised the initiative. She said that the numbers that Johnson cited that New Haven averages one domestic violence homicide per year, and that in 2017 New Haven police responded to 4,217 domestic violence calls and made 2,058 arrests related to those calls, are likely on the low side.
“I know that the numbers that you have about the domestic violence instances that we have in New Haven are actually higher,” she said, “because some people don’t even report and those are the people that go under the radar.”
She said that she worked with the Yale Child Study Center and the New Haven police several years ago to go doorknocking in Dwight and West River and to assess just how widespread an issue domestic violence is in the neighborhoods.
“We found that part of the problem was going from one place to another place to another place,” she said, “reliving what happened to you, and really a lot of people were ashamed to even talk about it. So I understand why something like this is needed in an urban center.”
She pressed Stubblefield and Johnson to make sure that they collect accurate and meticulous data on the number of victims they reach each year if the money for the center is approved, as that data will be critical in allowing the alders to assess the center’s efficacy.
Stubblefield said that the Umbrella Center already records every interaction they have with individuals in every community they work in, and that they are planning on meeting with the different community management teams soon to discuss the vision for this center and begin a spring-summer fundraising campaign.
Johnson said that, if their budget request is approved, they hope to open the family justice center in January 2019.
The Board of Alders must approve a final version of the budget by the first week of June.
The next and last public budget hearing, during which the Finance Committee will listen to public testimony about the budget, is on Wednesday, May 9, at 6 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.