Lake County Crisis Center for the Prevention & Treatment of Domestic Violence, Inc.

A Safe Place is continuing to focus on maintaining and improving the levels of service now provided to women and families in domestic abuse situations due to the following factors:
a. Political Environment:
The uncertain state budget and possible dramatic cuts to state and federal funds for Domestic Violence and Section 8 Housing places additional pressure on A Safe Place and makes expansion of services to a broader geographic area difficult for the near future.
b. Funding Environment:
The situation described above impacts many in the Lake County nonprofit community and makes the funding environment more competitive and shrinks the options for funding sources.
c. Building a Stable, Sustainable Organization:
Develop strategies to further engage staff and board in order to gain a more sustainable organization with the goal of building on the high-quality services delivered by highly qualified staff and developing a stronger board that can be the strong support and governing body that will propel A Safe Place forward is the right focus.

Maintain current levels of domestic violence services:
a. Budgetary Considerations: Continue to bring in resources to meet the costs of maintaining services and the incremental costs to fully stabilize and sustain A Safe Place at the current service levels. Costs will be incurred in addressing staffing and personnel issues; in building the infrastructure and maintaining the physical plant of ASP; and in taking on new development strategies which are laid out in the strategic plan components that follow.
b. Data Collection Considerations: Most of staff time on task is in direct service to clients. Data is kept on numbers of clients served and what types of services are provided, but little follow up data exists once a client moves on from ASP services. This poses a dilemma of documentation and getting to outcomes. The lack of ability to “follow" a client is caught up in issues of confidentiality as well as the staff time and effort to be able to document outcome measure
s. ASP will explore options for data documentation, consulting, and collaborating with other domestic violence providers.

c. Sanctuary Model and Trauma-Informed Services: A Safe Place's implementation of the Sanctuary Model and Trauma-Informed Services is a positive focus for all of the work of the organization. Building a means for collecting outcome data for this model is a challenge to be looked at from both a training and technology perspective.

Ensure that we have the Board we need to meet current challenges and to insure future success:
a. Building the board of the future: implementing strategies for gaining more diversity on the board as well as engaging members who have status and reach in order to open doors and raise funds for ASP.
b. Clearly defining the “work of the board" including fiduciary/fundraising responsibilities, setting direction and policy and succession planning.
c. Developing a plan for board commitment to both giving and “getting" for ASP.

Address Personnel Issues and Build a Strong, Committed, Highly Qualified Staff by addressing personnel problems:
a. It is difficult to afford and maintain the level of staff needed. Beds in the Shelter are empty due to lack of staff to service clients. When there are staff vacancies, remaining staff fill in but are concerned about their positions and keeping up with responsibilities. The ideal staffing plan paired with a focused funding strategy could remedy this.
b. ASP has high staff turnover resulting in a loss of experience, relationships and institutional memory. The average tenure of currently filled permanent full and part time staff is slightly more than 2 years; 9 are filled with employees hired in the last year. Six (6) positions are currently unfilled. There is a steep learning curve for new staff with limited people to orient and mentor them.
c. Non-existent support staff means that all staff, including senior staff, are taking on support roles that consume time

Strategic Plans set the roadmap to fulfill an organization's goals and point its direction forward. Today, we often chart our courses using a GPS allowing us to choose between alternative routes. The board and staff of A Safe Place have put time and effort into exploring several possible routes for the next few years. This plan is their informed choice of the right direction for ASP in the current environment and is the result of hard work and thoughtful, open participation.
• Phase I: Assessment and Discovery:
Gather data via small group and individual interviews with Board, staff, service providers and other key informants (government, funders, businesses, etc.). More than 66 interviews were conducted. In addition, demographic and ethnographic information was gathered about Lake County, IL as well as articles and reports that would add to the base for planning.
• Phase II: Assessing Possible Futures
Use the information gathered to develop four different strategies/options for future directions for A Safe Place.
• Phase III: Agreement on the Strategic Direction for A Safe Place
A board/staff retreat was held in November 2016 to assess options and determine directions for final consideration. Emerging from that retreat was a working consensus that two paths forward warranted further development:
1. Expand to Serve All of Lake County
2. Find a Strategic Partner

In 2017, we held a Board Recruitment event in partnership with the Chicago Bears to raise awareness of our services to some of our longstanding and top donors and to recruit new board members. The event resulted in major media publicity for A Safe Place as well as 3-4 new interested, engaged board members.