Contact:  Casey Gwinn, President, Family Justice Center Alliance (888) 511-3522 or (619) 980-8883

The National Family Justice Center Alliance (www.familyjusticecenter.org) is pleased to announce the selection of six sites to participate in the California Family Justice Initiative, after a competitive process that began in June 2009.  This exciting new Initiative has been funded by the Blue Shield of California Foundation (www.blueshieldcafoundation.org) and involves the development of six “learning laboratories” across the California where a network of multi-agency, co-located service delivery models for victims of domestic violence and their children will be supported and expanded.  The six communities selected are:

  Northridge (San Fernando Valley)
  Richmond
  Shasta County
  Sonoma County
  South Bay (San Diego County)
  Stanislaus County

The Initiative includes a learning collaborative model with teams from each selected site, grant funding for each selected site in the second year of the Initiative, and technical assistance and strategic planning support for two years for the participating sites.  “This Initiative points the way toward the future for agencies struggling to maintain their own funding and programs,” said Casey Gwinn, President of the National Family Justice Center Alliance.  “Given the economy, shrinking resources, and rising demand for services, communities and agencies across this state need to move toward more and more collaboration, partnerships, and co-located service models if they are going to meet the needs of victims and their children,” said Gwinn.


The California Family Justice Initiative will also involve three nationally recognized Family Justice Centers that will serve as Regional Training Centers for the Initiative:  The Alameda County Family Justice Center (www.acfjc.org);  the Anaheim Family Justice Center (www.anaheimfamilyjusticecenter.org); and the San Diego Family Justice Center (www.sandiegofjc.org).


 “In this era of economic hardship, the ability to have a ‘one stop shop’ for victims of domestic violence becomes not just an ideal but a necessity. The ability to receive information, service, support, and referrals on the same day, at the same place, is almost a dream come true,” said Gail Pincus from the Domestic Abuse Center in Los Angeles.  “Co-locating advocates at the Family Justice Center ensures that violence survivors will have immediate access to legal help in a safe and secure environment that will also increase collaboration and communication between sexual assault/domestic violence survivors and medical personnel, social service workers, law enforcement and legal advocates,” said Barbara Siegel, the Managing Attorney of Neighborhood Legal Services in Los Angeles.

“The CA Family Justice Initiative award is very important to Richmond; a city plagued by high crime and violence.  The Initiative will help Richmond develop comprehensive solutions to the problem of violence within a family,” said   “Domestic violence is the underpinning of many other forms of violence in our community. We can't deal with school violence if we have kids growing up in violent homes. We can't deal with what's happening on the street, what's going on in gangs or violence in general. We can't deal with any of that unless we have kids growing up in appropriate family environments,” said Gloria Sandoval, Executive Director of STAND! Against Domestic Violence. 

“The CA Family Justice Initiative is very important to Shasta County because it will strengthen the community partner relationships we have forged thus far and allow for better client services.  The initiative will allow counties involved to learn from one another to form best practices in meeting client needs.  Meeting a client's needs in one location will allow for easier access to resources, which they may have never utilized otherwise,” said Angela Fitzgerald, the Program Director for the Crime Victims Assistance Center in Shasta County.
 

“We are very proud that our hard work to open the doors of a Family Justice Center in Stanislaus County has been recognized by the National Family Justice Center Alliance.  We are looking forward to working with the Regional Training Centers and the five other learning labs to accomplish our goal of establishing a Center to better serve the victims of family violence and sexual abuse in our community,” said Carol Shipley, Assistant District Attorney in the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office.

For more information, go to www.familyjusticecenter.org.