domestic violence

When a single mom with two children flees a domestic violence situation and has no money, no relatives, and no place to go, what does she do? She can contact 211.

I am not sure many people know about this service, but the state manages a resource line that provides the names and contact information of organizations that assist the public. The resource directory is also online at http://www.resourcehouse.info/win211/.

The 211 website search function for transitional housing in King County came up with 71 listings. A statewide search came up with 143 listings. The listings typically provide the phone number, hours, a link to the website, and the address. (Note: the addresses for domestic violence shelters are not listed.)

When searching “domestic violence,” a page that narrows the search by topics appears. Topics include a multilingual shelter hotline, domestic violence support groups, counseling services for children affected by domestic violence, and much more.

Overall, the website was fairly easy to use and you can search by county or area code, which is nice. You can even create an account to save searches. The second option is to call 211. The phone operator first prompts you to press one for English and two for Spanish. These two options make me wonder what non-English or Spanish-speaking refugees and immigrant populations do when first faced with a crisis situation.

The voice-recorded operator then directs the caller to dial a number for H1N1 or census information. After wasting my valuable minutes, I am finally transferred to a real-life person. His name is Cory. I soon learn from Cory that the area code of the phone number a person used to dial 211 directs them to that specific county’s information line. For example, I live in Seattle, but I have a 360 area code, so I was automatically routed to the call center for Clallam, Jefferson, and Kitsap Counties.

The greatest risk for the development of a writer is self-censorship. Last night, I attended another session of a poetry group with Friends of the Children, where volunteers, mentors, and a therapist all gather to help foster youth express in poetry the anxiety of growing up in unstable situations. And weekly, we remind our teens that they can say anything they wish—they can swear, they don’t have to spell anything correctly, and they can talk about topics that their teachers forbid them to mention—gangs, abuse, rape, fights.

And yet each week, I see these youth decide that something they want to say is not worth saying. They decide these things because they have been previously led to believe that their experience should not be encouraged and validated.

During Seattle University’s first seminar on family homelessness for journalists and scholars, Vince Matulionis of United Way mentioned that one of the most difficult parts of being homeless can be the fact that people do not make eye contact with someone on the street or with someone asking for assistance. Each avoidance, he said, can take a little piece of dignity from someone who is homeless, just like each act of self-censorship robs a piece of confidence from these teens.

Though it is commonly thought that the term “homeless” only refers to someone without a house over their head, the term, as Carol, Cassandra and I are learning, has come to represent a much wider variety of people for whom stable living is an issue—foster youth, detained youth, women who couch-surf to escape domestic violence, or someone who is just about to lose their home. So how does one learn to express oneself, to tell one’s story, when food, housing, and safety are the most immediate concerns?

Hot weather and a cold economy have combined to drive up domestic violence cases, according to local law enforcement officials in Deming, New Mexico. Cases often increase in summer months because of heat-related stress, but an increasing number of cases also seem to have joblessness and money worries as aggravating factors, writes Kevin Buey of the Deming Headlight.

Hot weather and a cold economy have combined to drive up domestic violence cases, according to local law enforcement officials in Deming, New Mexico. Cases often increase in summer months because of heat-related stress, but an increasing number of cases also seem to have joblessness and money worries as aggravating factors, writes Kevin Buey of the Deming Headlight.