FAMILY RESCUE
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Mission Statement
Family Rescue is dedicated to eliminating domestic violence in the Chicago community by providing comprehensive support services and shelter to victims of domestic violence particularly abused women and their children: engaging in advocacy to promote future system change; and encouraging prevention through community education.
About This Cause
For almost 40 years, Family Rescue has assisted victims of domestic violence and their children escape violence and build a foundation towards their full potential in a violence-free life by providing free, confidential, and bilingual (English and Spanish) services that are trauma-informed. For each program, upon intake, the client meets with their advocate to create a safety and service plan. Safety plans are of the upmost important to our clients. It assists them with planning for any situation for both themselves and their children. The service plans outline goals the client wants to reach during their time working with Family Rescue. We recognize that victims have specific needs after leaving their abuser and we work to cater our programming to those specialized needs. All clients engage in trauma-sensitive counseling with their advocates to process the abuse they experienced in a healthy way. Clients are also able to take advantage of a variety of services, including: crisis intervention; individual and group counseling; case management; financial literacy classes; substance abuse recovery support; supportive housing; safe shelter; linkage to resources; individual and systemic advocacy; assistance with employment and housing searches; structured children’s programs; violence prevention education; transportation assistance; and a 24-hour bilingual crisis line. Opened in 1982, the Rosenthal Family Lodge (RFL) offers emergency shelter for victims and their children escaping domestic violence. RFL opened as the second domestic violence-specific shelter in Chicago with 19 beds, but quickly expanded to the 36 beds. Up until 2016, Family Rescue operated the only domestic violence-specific shelter on the South Side. Clients can stay up to 120 days in its home-like environment while they work with their advocates to build a foundation of success going forward. Also housed at RFL is Family Rescue’s crisis line. The Supportive Housing Program (SH) consists of Family transitional housing program (Ridgeland Apartments & Children’s Program) and rapid-rehousing units (New Heights Apartments). Traditionally, domestic violence victims are not considered “chronically homeless,” so they are unable to take advantage of typical low-income or rapid rehousing programs. Both programs aim to help survivors learn how to manage a household on their own and move towards paying market-rate rent through helping them increase and maintain their income. Family Rescue assists the client with the management of their unit, such as intervening if the client has maintenance or other issues that arise with renting an apartment. For most of our clients, this is the first time they will be renting an apartment in their name, so they need a little extra support to help them understand what the landlord/tenant relationship looks like. To respond to an uptick of young women with children coming through RFL, Family Rescue opened Ridgeland Apartments & Children’s Program (RAP) in 1991 with 22 individual apartments, ranging from one to three bedrooms. It was the first transitional housing program in the country to provide subsidized housing and comprehensive support programs for domestic violence survivors with children. Survivors may live at RAP for up to two years, which allows them ample time to work through the unique barriers they face when developing and maintaining a violence-free life. Finding affordable housing has always been a struggle in Chicago, but it is harder for victims of domestic violence because they do not qualify under HUD’s traditional affordable housing guidelines. Family Rescue started New Heights Apartments (NHA) in 2019 to unlock more housing opportunities for survivors, giving them the ability to stay in neighborhoods where they are comfortable. NHA is open to survivors with and without children, unlike RAP, which only allows survivors with children. NHA consists of 54 scattered-sites apartments: 18 transitional housing units and 36 rapid rehousing units. Clients have their own lease through the property owner. One of the advantages of having scattered sites across Chicago is it gives clients the flexibility to choose where they want to live. This is especially attractive to domestic violence survivors, who might need to move quickly if their abuser finds them. We have chosen to collaborate with multi-site property owners, so the client can easily move between sites if deemed necessary, transferring their lease to the new unit seamlessly. The Community Outreach Program (COR) serves non-residential clients at Family Rescue’s offices and pre-determined locations throughout the community, such as churches and community centers. COR works with clients who are living independently from their abuser and with those who are trying to leave. In addition to client services, COR works within the Latina community to raise awareness about domestic violence, its warning signs, and successful prevention tactics. In 2018, COR expanded and added mobile unit offices in four Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) locations. These offices receive referrals and assist families that come through DFSS that are affected by domestic violence. We are the sole provider of domestic violence-specific services in Chicago’s DFSS offices. The Children’s Services Program is an important component of the programs at RFL, SH, and COR. It is our policy that children, as well as adult survivors, are treated as primary clients when they come into our programs. These young clients enter Family Rescue with a range of behavioral difficulties that echo the stress and trauma they have experienced. An abbreviated Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is administered to all children through their parent, when they first enter the program and when they exit. The checklist highlights any concerns they have for their child and staff confirms through interactions and observations. This checklist indicates which services the child will receive from who: the advocate, the Child Behavioral Specialist, or the Licensed Clinical Social Work (LCSW). Each child is assigned an advocate who provides normalization, educational, socialization, and recreational activities for the child and coordinates the child’s services. This foundational layer gives the child a sense of stability and comfort. The second layer of services includes a more clinical approach to services. This layer involves the Child Behavioral Specialist at RFL and the LCSW at SH and COR. A child receives this level of intervention if they have three or more indicators checked on their CBCL or they have one behavior checked with a severity level of four or five. These children receive more individual and family counseling. The third level of service is activated for children who come in to Family Rescue with a behavioral diagnosis or who currently take psych medication; have been severely traumatized and exhibiting serious emotional or behavioral problems; and/or have three or more indicators checked on the CBCL with a four or five-level severity. These clients see the LCSW, whom Family Rescue works with on a contractual basis. Both RFL and RAP also operate after school programs for the children, assisting them with schoolwork and providing a place for them to go before their parent returns home from work. During the summer, RAP runs a summer camp for its residents, which aims to keep its younger clients busy during the day with field trips and learning activities through a trauma-informed lens. Since its founding, Family Rescue has recognized the important role the legal system should play in a victim’s journey to independence. Through the Legal Advocacy Program (LAP), Family Rescue works with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to identify high-risk victims and in the courthouse, assisting victims with civil and criminal proceedings. In 1992, Family Rescue collaborated with CPD to develop the Domestic Violence Reduction Unit (DVRU), the first in the country. Originally housed solely in the 3rd Police District, the DVRU’s goal is to reduce the number of domestic violence-related homicides and injuries by providing training to officers about domestic violence and collecting risk assessments from domestic calls. Officers on scene take down information from the victim to build a risk assessment and if the victim agrees, the officers then release that information to our advocates, who then reaches out to the victim within 24 hours to offer services. We have since expanded into the Area South complex, which houses detectives for 4th, 5th, 6th, and 22nd Districts. Being in the Area South complex allows our advocates to increase our participation in felony domestic violence cases by working with detectives and expand the DVRU into 4th District. Our presence at the Centralized Domestic Violence Court of Cook County allows our clients to have an advocate help them through both the civil and criminal aspects of their case. They assist clients with understanding the complexity of the court system and ensuring that they utilize every avenue possible to gain safety from their abuser, including filing criminal charges. Family Rescue is the only social service organization with offices in any Chicago police station and we are one of two agencies with offices in the courthouse. Family Rescue is proud of the relationship we have with CPD and the State’s Attorney’s Office. These relationships greatly benefit our clients on their path to safety, security, and reaching their full potential in a violence-filled world.