A WOMANS PLACE INC

A Woman’s Place believes that every person deserves a life without violence. AWP’s major goals are:

1) Ensuring safety for survivors of domestic abuse. The safehouse offers a healing and welcoming environment as well as advocacy support without judgement.

2) Promoting healing and growth for survivors and their families by providing trauma-informed advocacy that addresses the distinct needs of each client. We advocate to support and empower victims by providing resources to achieve self-sufficiency.

3) Educating about domestic violence and the options available to domestic violence victims as a means of preventing abuse in our community. We educate our community about the effects of domestic violence to increase awareness and prevention.

We anticipate that the demand for our services will continue to grow. To meet the demand, we will increase our service capacity through expanded partnerships and increased engagement of volunteers and interns.

Over the past five years, we have doubled the number of interns and volunteers we work with annually. We will continue to update our recruitment and training strategies to further increase the number of interns and volunteers serving AWP clients.

1) A Woman’s Place remained open for the entirety of 2020
During the pandemic, survivors of domestic violence faced additional challenges due to closures and the limited availability of community resources. As the only domestic violence safehouse in Weld County, A Woman’s Place provided a critical resource and we were committed to continuing these services without interruption.

Throughout the pandemic, the agency worked with the local health department and the state domestic violence coalition, Violence Free Colorado, to develop a protocol for operating during a pandemic, which included the following mitigation strategies:
• masks are mandatory and enforced
• social distancing enforced
• regular sanitation and cleaning of high-touch surfaces
• employee symptom and exposure checks
• improvements to ventilation systems

Additionally, the agency was proactive in providing support to advocates, who faced additional stressors due to the pandemic. Paid sick leave and hazard pay was available, and Executive Director Diane Heldt regularly checked in by phone or video with employees one-on-one. The agency also provided virtual team coaching to teach strategies to cope with stress and virtual yoga sessions. At the end of the year, our turnover rate was 29.3%, down from 61.5% in 2019.

2) Expansion of Housing and Employment Support Services
In 2020, we started our first Rapid ReHousing Program, which has been shown to help get people in stable housing quickly. As part of our Rapid ReHousing Program, we help eligible participants identify housing and provide financial assistance for housing-related costs (e.g., rent, security deposits, moving costs, etc.) as well as conduct Landlord Outreach and Education to increase the availability of affordable units. The program has also put us in conversation with housing providers in Northern Colorado, which has allowed us to coordinate resources and develop processes for providing housing advocacy.

3) A focus on Diversity and Inclusion
AWP is an inclusive agency and we continued our work to ensure that our services are accessible to all who need them regardless of their background. During the pandemic, all of our signs with COVID updates were translated to Spanish, which is the most common language spoken by our clients (after English). We also updated our agency brochures and had them translated to the most commonly spoken languages in our community, which include: English, Spanish, Somali, Swahili and Karen. The new brochures also added images to be more inclusive in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and ability. Finally, we created a new agency video, available in English and Spanish, with the aim of improving the representation of different groups that we serve. The videos are shared at community education events and are available online on our website:
English: https://www.awpdv.org/uploa