Domestic Violence Prevention Capacity Building

Newhouse’s capacity building and 45% bed/service expansion will narrow service gaps for vulnerable adults and children affected by domestic violence.   
 
Domestic Violence is a community health crisis. 

Violence is increasing at an alarming rate in our community, and Newhouse supports people of all ages who have bravely escaped physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at home – a place that should be but has been anything but safe for the hundreds we serve at Newhouse every year.  

Founded in 1971, Newhouse is Kansas City’s first and oldest nonprofit domestic violence shelter and is the only domestic violence shelter situated in the urban core of the metro. Our 88-bed emergency facility is located within a 3.5-mile radius of where 85% of the violent crimes prosecuted in Jackson County occur. We are rooted right where our community needs us most. 

During COVID, Kansas City police reported a 22% increase in the volume of domestic violence calls1. While COVID cases have leveled out, the need for safe housing, therapy, legal, case management, transitional housing and employment services for survivors remain at a critical level in our community.  

Missouri ranks in our nation’s top ten deadliest states for women to be killed by their abusers and has the third-highest rate of people who have experienced domestic violence2. These are not statistics we can ignore. In 2021, the Kansas City region provided domestic violence services to 8,499 individuals, an 11% increase from 2020. Staggeringly, however, 12,738 people who found the courage to leave their abuser or reach out for help in 2021 were turned away due to a lack of resources and bed space at domestic violence shelters3.  

Newhouse serves our community’s most vulnerable and historically underserved populations using evidence-based practices and a unique “no time limit for care” approach. This positions survivors for a high rate of long-term success and significantly reduces the probability that a survivor will return to their abuser.  

At present, Newhouse provides a near equal bed count (88 beds) to other shelters (with a maximum 100 beds) in Jackson County but operates on the smallest budget of any domestic violence shelter in Jackson County (an approximately 55% lower budget). This disparity between operating budgets in comparison to bed count has been Newhouse’s reality for 24 years. For decades, we have been serving those in greatest need with high quality services, but on a shoestring budget. 

In 2021, the median income for people living in our shelter’s 64124 zip code was $39,918 or 34% lower than the median income of $60,080 in Jackson County. 26% of people living in our shelter’s 64124 zip code are living in poverty, 11% higher than the overall rate of poverty in Kansas City which is 15%.  Poverty is a key driver of violence in our community, and a key cause of survivors staying with their abusers. With no resources, victims have no way out. They are stuck in a system that is built to keep them stuck. Newhouse’s ecosystem approach addresses the root of the systemic and community challenges that feed violence, poverty, and the lack of access to equitable services.  

We know boys who witness domestic violence are 10 times as likely to become abusers themselves, and girls who witness domestic violence growing up are six times as likely to be sexually assaulted.5 This isn’t about simply solving a present problem; this is about interrupting the cycle of generational violence, which is a core focus for Newhouse. 

1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men will experience some form of domestic violence in their lifetime. For black and indigenous women, they experience instances of domestic violence at an alarming 30-50% higher rate than that of white women, and they have the highest rate of intimate partner homicide6.  On average, 57 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every month in the United States. However, with less than 300 beds available for survivors in our Kansas City community, far too many are forced to stay in abusive and dangerous situations.   

Newhouse delivers wraparound services for people currently enrolled in our shelter or non-residential services and provides a continuum of care for those who have graduated from our shelter programs. Our no-cost services include a 24-hour hotline, safe housing, healing therapy for adults and children, case management, substance dependency counseling and recovery stabilization, job readiness support, and legal services to obtain full orders of protection, divorce, and child custody awards. Additionally, Newhouse is the only DV shelter to provide a full-time Early Learning Center employing Conscious Discipline and The Creative Curriculum for children birth to age five, as well as an Educational Innovation Center focusing on students K thru 12th grade with programs to enhance and accelerate their education. To reduce violence, we need to expand our programs and safe housing options for domestic violence victims.  

From 2020 to 2021, Kansas City saw an 11% increase of people served by domestic violence organizations – yet consistently, every year since 2019, more than 12,000 people needing services have been turned away annually due to lack of space and resources.  

To address the urgent need but lack of beds for survivors in our community, Newhouse raised funds in 2022 to construct a new Intake and Healing Center on our campus. Expected to break ground in late summer of 2023, this fully-funded addition will add a critically needed 40 new beds to our residential space, meeting the ever-present need of our community. This will increase Newhouse’s bed count by 45% and elevate Newhouse to the largest bed capacity of any shelter in the metro, accounting for more than 40% of the total bed capacity in Kansas City.  

The addition will create immediate access to bedspace and service resources for those in dangerous and potentially lethal situations. It will also expand our outreach and non-residential services for those who have safe shelter but need other support services to heal and become self-sufficient. However, federal, state, and local funding will not scale at the same rate that the beds will be needed/filled. More beds and services are needed now! Therefore, Newhouse is seeking capacity building funds through the Byrne Justice grant to support service and program expansion in step with our forthcoming physical expansion to continue to reduce violence and save lives in our community. 

These funds will also kick-start our community ecosystem initiative: creating a multisector collaboration to unite various social services and support agencies to eliminate barriers to services; improving equity and capacity, allowing more people to be served with high-quality and culturally grounded services; enabling us to better capture and track data around impact, recurring needs for services; and eliminating the re-traumatization of survivors having to tell their story repeatedly in order to access services from various agencies. Most importantly, it saves agency’s money via a streamlined intake process and enhanced data-sharing throughout the social services system. Our innovative approach to serve survivors is the catalyst to drive generational change and break the cycle of violence.