Families To Freedom Inc

Our vision is to make it possible for victims and new survivors to get away from domestic abuse situations. By helping them break free from domestic abuse, we can stop the cycle. The children we travel with have the most to gain through living in a more loving, supportive environment so they can get counseling, support and modeling for a normal adult life. This breaks the cycle of abuse for them. Our goal is to reduce child abuse, reduce hospitalizations, reduce homelessness, and reduce fatalities resulting from victims who are unable to get away. We enable disappearance from stalkers, a return to the workforce, healthy homes for children, and life-long freedom from abuse.

Families to Freedom fills the lack of transportation gap by providing Rides to Safety for victims to get to a domestic violence shelter anywhere in North Texas, East Texas, and the Gulf Coast, and shelter survivors to get to a family home far away for long-term safety and support. In 2021 Families to Freedom transported over 550 victims and children to arrive at emergency shelter or family far away. Victims do not pay anything for their car ride to shelter or road trip to a family home or Greyhound bus ticket to another state or fuel to drive to family in another state. Transportation services provided by Families to Freedom are tailored to each caller’s safety plans and needs based on their circumstances. We remove barriers by providing car seats for those with young children, animal crates for those with pets, and flexibility to go when the client is ready. We strive to reduce the rate of domestic violence victims who cannot find shelter or get far away from their abusers by expanding their search for facilities located across Texas, whether it's merely a ten minute drive or up to three hours drive and several counties away. By helping shelter survivors leave for a family home far away, we make it possible for survivors to receive long-term support and we make that space open for the next crisis hotline caller who needs it.

Since starting free transportation services for domestic violence victims in October 2015, Families to Freedom has embarked on over 3,000 trips long and short. Families to Freedom employs hotline advocates who are specially trained to assist with safety planning for a victim's exit from an abusive home, to provide emotional support for callers in distress, and gather necessary information needed for transportation. We also employ operations specialists who are specially trained at executing each victim's travel. They are trained at installing child car seats, monitoring all travel progress, communicating with the drivers and victims for ease at pick-up, and evaluating a variety of ticketed travel for those going by bus or flight. We employ program managers to oversee hotline and operations roles to perform at high standards, to handle escalated calls and situations, to onboard and train volunteer drivers, and assist victims with applying for crime victims compensation when able. Our volunteer team is strong enough to handle the increasingly high demand for transportation service needed by victims. Before accepting any volunteer or committing to a new hire, we thoroughly vet applicants’ backgrounds with the required criminal background checks. Volunteer drivers must also submit to a background check of their driving records. Finally, Families to Freedom has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with 35 Texas domestic violence shelters. These agreements ensure that both agencies will communicate under mutual confidentiality, in a joint effort, to ensure victims’ arrival and departure from their respective shelters. The MOU also guarantees that each agency agrees to provide services to the victims in our care.

In five years of starting service, we have driven, bused, flown, and given fuel cards to over 2,500 victims and children. Our annual average has become serving over 550 victims and children each year. As of 2022, we have completed transportation over 2,200 times, gone to shelters 1,500 times, driven to family homes 300 times, bought 250 bus and commercial flight tickets, and given away 180 fuel cards for victims with a vehicle. We provide more direct service to victims and at risk children than some of the domestic violence centers in our area that claim a greater impact on solving the regions domestic violence issues. While Families to Freedom has current limitations in the services we can provide, such as our inability to provide in-person counseling and direct legal guidance, we remain nimble enough to adapt to victims’ needs and dedicated to filling the transportation gap the leads towards a lifetime of freedom of abuse. Strategic growth is aimed at opening more offices and launching service in other regions of Texas over the next ten years. This dream and goal to expand service to all Texas victims, and beyond, depends greatly on community support from donors, from corporations, from grantors, and from you wherever you are reading this. With a spirit of full transparency in all that we do, our website will remain loaded with financial and travel data for supporters to track our progress, and with announcements of our growth over time as we do grow.