Nonprofit Profile: RACS offers support system for women suffering from domestic, sexual violence

From #jcmo Inside Business

Hairy legs and high heels line up at the start of the 14th Annual Walk a Mile in Her Shoes fundraiser hosted in June 2015 by the Jefferson City Rape and Abuse Crisis Service at Memorial Park.
Hairy legs and high heels line up at the start of the 14th Annual Walk a Mile in Her Shoes fundraiser hosted in June 2015 by the Jefferson City Rape and Abuse Crisis Service at Memorial Park.

Since 1980, the Jefferson City Rape and Abuse Crisis Service Inc. (RACS) has been providing shelter and support to women suffering from domestic and sexual violence. Two years after its inception, RACS became a partner agency with United Way of Central Missouri.

The organization served about 225 women and children last year, accounting for 6,800 bed-night stays, said Alden Henrickson, RACS executive director. Clients don’t have to live in the shelter to access RACS services, which include counseling, support group, hotline accessibility and advocacy, said Mary Cunningham, RACS shelter director.

RACS reaches women in nine Mid-Missouri counties. Maureen Qualheim, RACS outreach advocate, serves the eight counties outlining Cole County and is responsible for assisting survivors in filling protection orders and attending court proceedings.

Q. What is the mission of RACS?

Mary Cunningham: “To provide services to victims of domestic violence or sexual assault and help them to live a violence-free life.”

Maureen Qualheim: “That covers a lot of things, like making sure if they choose to leave their situation that they have a shelter they can come to or it may involve relocating them to a safe environment. What happens in the meantime is that they may need counseling to help with the changes, they may need advocacy whether it’s a criminal case that’s pending or getting a protection order. It’s a pretty involved process.”

MC: “A lot of our women have to leave everything; therefore, they’re coming into a situation in which they have to start from the beginning. A lot of times, that means finding a new job because he wouldn’t let her work. If she has children, we’ll help find child care too. It’s a very involved process in order to take that step.”

Q. Do the victims you serve suffer from other forms of abuse?

Alden Henrickson: "One thing I learned right off the bat, it’s not necessarily just physical violence. It can also be an emotional teardown. It can be isolationism, and those kind of go hand in hand. It can be that they flat out have no self-esteem or no self-worth. They feel that sometimes it’s all their fault. I say, ‘they’ because it’s not only the women, but the children and family members who can be dragged down to it."

MQ: That’s part of the power of control — to isolate that person that you’re targeting so they depend totally on you.

Q. What percentage of the organization’s donations are used locally?

AH: “All of the money stays here. ... There is no federal program that we finance.”

Q. What’s RACS’ biggest fundraiser?

AH: “We have the ‘Walk a Mile in Her Shoes’ and barbecue event. It raised $20,000 last year.”

Q. How much of a donation goes for general administration, and how much is left to support program services?

AH: “13.6 percent of donations go toward administrative services.”

Q. Is a contribution tax-deductible?

AH: “Yes, and if someone donates $100 or more, they can qualify for a 50 percent tax credit.”

Q. What ways do women come to you?

MQ: "As the outreach advocate, I get referrals from the police departments that I work with, sheriff’s departments, prosecuting attorneys. We also get a lot of word of mouth referrals. Sometimes if we’re helping someone, she will pass along information to another who is being abused. It is varied how we get referrals."

MC: The hospitals are also good that if they suspect abuse, they will talk to the women about abuse and try to get them to contact us. Or, we will go to the hospital if the client wants us to. I think word of mouth referrals are the most common for the shelter.

AH: "We will also send a counselor out if someone feels like they can’t get to the shelter for some reason or doesn’t have the means to do it because someone is watching them, for example. We have the means to make a visit, both a counselor and advocate."

Q. Once a survivor comes to you, how do you identify her needs or that she should be in the shelter?

MC: “I don’t think it’s so much that we determine what she needs, but she tells us what she needs. Most of them realize that if they’re going to get out of a situation, they’re going to have to get a job and they’re going to have to get a place to live. So some of them are at the place where they’ve been debating this for a while and they’re ready to go out and start. Some of them had an incident that was so traumatic that they had to get out, but they weren’t prepared mentally for that. So they may need some time to understand, ‘I just took this step, what do I do now?’”

MQ: “That’s where some of our other services come into play, too. Meeting the client where they are often involves a lot of support. People are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and all sorts of challenges directly related to the violence they’ve experienced. We want to make sure, as we’re trying to build and work on goals they’ve set, that there’s a support system in place. That’s so important because sometimes they don’t have anyone else to help them through these challenging times. That’s why counseling is so important and advocacy is so important, getting out in the community and letting people know what we do.”

Q. How many beds are in the shelter?

AH: “We have nine suites with four beds each, and we have up to four cribs. So we can handle up to 40. That means that last year we were almost full a lot. It fluctuates. We’re asked why that is a lot, and there’s not necessarily a rhyme or reason to it. We have to be ready for that. We can handle that. We don’t have too many we turned away, and in those cases we try our hardest to find another safe place for them to stay. I think, at this point in time, our shelter is large enough to handle most situations.”

Q. What's available for children at the shelter?

AH: “They many times have children, who can be a wide range of ages. So we have a playground, and we try to keep things as normal as possible for them. We make arrange- ments to make sure they’re going to school. The kids can also get counseling, and we try to make it as friendly as possible. We’re working now with Parents as Teachers to re-institute that program. We have all kinds of clothes donated, not only for the adults but also for the children. All kinds of toys are donated. We have drives during Christmas time, too.”

Q. How long are survivors allowed to stay at the shelter?

AH: “There is no limit on how long a person can stay at the shelter. We find that they’re staying longer and longer. We want to take advantage of that and give them all the necessary tools so they feel comfortable when they leave. We’ve had people who’ve donated furniture because they’re starting with nothing. We’re trying to help them with the ability to pay the first month’s rent, so they can just get off the ground and really feel good about themselves.”

Q. Once a victim is on his/her own, does RACS have any follow up?

MQ: "Once they’re on their own, they still utilize our services. Making that transition is challenging. So we still want to make sure that if they leave, they continue to work with us — whether that be counseling or another resource. We’re always available to try and help in anyway we can.

"What I find with the survivors I work with is that it’s all about support. They’re going to have their good days and bad days. Unfortunately, some of our survivors, especially if they’re in a stalking situation, they may have moved and doing well then they’re located again. It’s all about support, which can sometimes be being on the other end of the phone and saying, ‘You’re not alone.’ It’s always an issue with safety planning — trying to make sure that they’re safe — because, bottom line, so those safety plans have to be constantly revisited. They can change at a moment’s notice. It’s about making sure that they know we always have an open door. Many want to continue with counseling because they are dealing with traumatic issues and they need time to work through them. It’s not a quick fix."

Q. When women come to the shelter, do you see that they have a sigh of relief?

MC: "I try to meet with a client within the first two or three days that she arrives. I have a lot of clients who will say to me, ‘I slept well for the first time in months, because I knew no one was going to be bothering me.’ The other aspect of it is when she leaves she is in the most danger because he is losing his control.

"They have to be careful, particularly in the first week or two, about going out and making sure that he’s not in the area. We don’t have a lot of problems with the abusers coming to the shelter or even hassling the women outside. Sometimes they’ll run into them at the store, then it can create some problems, but as far as actually trying to or get into the shelter, it rarely happens. We’re fortunate that if we call the police and say there’s an abuser on the property, they come immediately."

Q. What’s it like when you see women who you’ve helped out in the community and living a new life?

MQ: “It’s an inspiration. It makes me so glad that I’m in this work.”

MC: “It’s what keeps you at it because if you focused on those situations that don’t turn out well, you’d never be able to stay in the work very long. The women who are out in the community, holding down a job, taking care of their children and doing well, I’ll run into them at the grocery store and they’ll say, ‘Thank you so much.’ I’ll tell them, ‘You did it. You did the hard work.’”


For more local business coverage, read the full April 25, 2016, issue of #jcmo Inside Business.