The primary goal of our agency is to save lives by empowering victims to leave their abusers and preventing family violence from continuing into the next generation. To do this, we provide everything clients need to stay safe and escape from their batterers including counseling for adults and children, job, technical and life skills training for adults and educational services for children at confidential locations. Each of our programs has specific outcome goals that are formally evaluated.

Our primary startegy is to fully meet the needs of victims to ensure they have the resources to escape from batterers. Our programs have grown organizally as needs have been identified. If you look at a timeline of when our programs were established, you can see this progression in meeting client needs: Hotline and Emergency Shelter Services, established in 1978 Public Education, established in 1978 Outreach Counseling and Supportive Services for Adults and Children, established in 1982 Volunteer Program, established in 1978 Battering Intervention & Prevention Program, established in 1984 Resale Shop, established in 1989, expanded to Collin County in 2016 Long-term Transitional Housing, established in 1993 Incest Recovery Services, established in 1995 Client Legal Services, established in 1999 Be Project Youth Education and Leadership Development, established in 1999 Children's Educational Services, established in 2000 Faith and Liberty's Place Supervised Visitation and Monitored Exchange, established in 2003 Medical Clinic, established in 2013, expanded to a second location with a Dental Clinic in 2017 Second Shelter for Women and Children, established in 2017 Emergency Shelter Kennel, established 2017 Men's Emergency Shelter, established in 2017 The Family Place methodology addresses gaps in victim services including awareness and education about family violence, lack of access and understanding of available resources including the legal system, and a lack of ongoing services after crisis stabilization. We provide education and awareness through case management, counseling and advocacy. Case managers help victims understand empowerment and self determination. As advocates, staff provides a voice for victims who are not empowered to speak up for themselves and their children. Other factors that impact a victim's ability to choose an abuse-free life are a lack of access to resources including housing, legal assistance, employment and education. Our service delivery approach in all programs is victim-centered trauma-informed care in which the victim's wishes, safety and well being take priority to ensure the compassionate, sensitive delivery of services in a non-judgmental manner. We believe trauma-informed care is the most client-centered way to work with victims of trauma. Most importantly, we meet the victim where they are, understanding that each victim comes to us at a different stage of change and a one-fits-all approach will not lead to long-term success.

The Family Place has been a local and national leader in domestic violence services since 1978. We progressively address issues and continuously add innovative programming to help meet the burgeoning need. We are the largest provider of family violence services in North Texas and one of the largest in the country. We have 150 full-time employees and 61 part-time employees. In 2017, 1,703 volunteers supported our programs and funderaising activities. Volunteers are critical members of our team. Volunteers help maintain our facilities and grounds, plan special events for clients, serve as mentors, assist teachers with implementing classroom activities and supervising activities, tutor and read to children, prepare classroom materials, and provide extra arms to hold and rock babies. We have 38,000 constituents in our database. The Family Place is an active member of the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, to help coordinate and plan Continuum of Care services through this formalized network of homeless service providers. The North Texas Food Bank helps us meet client food supply needs. We have close, collaborative partnerships with local police departments, the Dallas County District Attorney's Office, and Child Protective Services to help increase victim safety and increase referrals for our services. Additionally, referrals and advocacy with the Office of the Attorney General of Texas help victims obtain Crime Victims' Compensation. These long-standing relationships help us to better serve larger numbers of clients in the most efficient manner. Partnerships with the Dallas Housing Authority, Community Council of Greater Dallas and others help clients obtain the community resources and benefits needed to maintain their basic needs. We are the lead agency in the Dallas Domestic Violence High Risk Offender Team, a collaboration of the Dallas County District Attorney's Office, Dallas County Probation, Dallas County Sheriff's Office, Dallas Police Department, Recovery Healthcare and Genesis Women's Shelter. The group works to shorten the time between assault and prosecution and is exploring ways to reduce risk to victims by improving warrant delivery, increasing access to protective orders, raising bonds, using GPS monitoring, and providing closer contact and referrals for victims.

The Family Place formally evaluates programs and uses performance data to practice continuous quality improvement. Program evaluation also includes process outcomes, which measure the quality of service delivery. Data for outcome reporting comes from client self-report, measurement instruments developed in-house, standard assessments, confirmation of improved circumstances in clients' lives and case records. We give clients the opportunity to provide feedback, adding to our knowledge of client outcomes and service quality. Semi-annual performance reports prepared by our Program Data Collection Specialist and shared with staff and other stakeholders include client outcome data, process outcome data and client feedback. A complete listing of outcomes is available if needed, but this is a sampling of core programs. Emergency Shelter Services 96% of clients reported we met their family's needs for safe shelter, food and clothing. Target: 90% 90% of (adult) clients reported increasing their safety planning skills. Target: 65% 92% of clients reported an increase in knowledge and understanding of crime victims' rights. Target: 75% 67% of clients reported an increase in knowledge of and access to community re- sources. Target: 75% 25% of families increased household income during their shelter stay . (Average increase among those 25%: $797 per month) 42% of client families exited to transitional or permanent housing Adult Nonresidential Counseling 99% of adult clients in the program at least one month report increasing their safety planning skills. Target: 75% 100% of adult clients increased their knowledge of available community resources. Target: 65% At exit 100% of individual and process group clients reported achieving some of their counseling goals. Target: 85%

2018 marks the 40th year of The Family Place saving lives in our community. In 1978, a group of community volunteers organized The Family Place as one of the first family violence shelters and service organizations in the state. Today The Family Place is the largest family violence service provider in North Texas, providing 179 shelter beds each night, including the state's only shelter for men and children. We served 10,049 clients with 130,996 hours of service last year alone. Over the past 40 years, we have counseled more than 215,000 clients, provided lifesaving shelter to more than 24,000 women, men and children, and answered more than 600,000 calls for help. We have helped more than 18,800 batterers learn how to change their abusive behavior and reach approximately 6,000 students each year through our youth education programs. All of our programs are provided in Spanish and in English. We recently completed a $17 million capital campaign and have expanded our bed capacity by 60%. The demand for our services is growing with the population of the North Texas. Texas is growing faster than any other state according to recent Census estimates adding 400,000 residents from July 1, 2016 to July 1, 2017, and North Texas is leading the way with North Texas cities among the fastest growing in the nation. We are committed to being here for those who need us when they need us most. To do this without cutting services, we maintain an aggressive fundraising program that includes more than 100+ requests annually to government entities, foundations and corporations. We also have an individual solicitation program through our newsletter, direct mail and email/website that reaches 38,000 constituents. Our resale shops and special events also raise funds for the agency. Additionally, we have begun to raise funds through The Family Place Foundation to endow specific programs in the organization. Building a new facility enabled us to lower rental expense, which is also important to the long-term sustainability of the organization.