Survivors Fleeing Viol. - CARE CM & HOPE Mentoring

SURVIVOR-LED EMERGENCY SERVICES:

Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Human Trafficking Intervention Advocacy and Support

We serve the most vulnerable in our community, humans fleeing domestic, sexual, and exploitive violence.  Our clients are dual diagnosis (trauma related mental illness and addiction diagnosis) and do not always feel safe calling the local police; so they call us.  Our acting Executive Director, Shannon Miller Cox, is a retired law enforcement officer, familiar with safely extracting victims in dangerous situations, with the support of other retired military and officers in our community.  

We conduct Lethality Assessment Protocols (LAPs) with a MOU collaboration with UDVC and South Valley Sanctuary (SVS) and try to locate safe emergency beds available in domestic violence and sexual assault shelters in the State.  We also work with the Attorney General's office UTIP (Utah Trafficking in Persons) Task Force, to support survivors and to help prosecute traffickers when our survivors are safe enough to trust the process.  

Most of the women we serve have been incarcerated previously and are not trusting of the legal process working on their behalf.  So those that choose not to deal with local courts and officials, are supported in leaving and starting new lives, without involving the criminal courts system.   Once these survivors are safe we start working with them on livable wage employment, trauma responsive therapy support, and safe housing.  These survivors are remarkably resilient with trauma responsive support in their lives.  

CARE/Adult and YOUTH SURVIVOR Empowered Community Health Case Management Program (CARE/Youth CHCM)

We need the funding to expand the amount of services we can provide to the most harmed girls and LBGTQIA+  in our community. These children have been sexually exploited and trafficked, they are suffering from severe Post Traumatic Brain Injuries, and addictions and are locked up in State facilities, the State Hospital, the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Unit and in our Juvenile Justice Facilities. They can also be found among our homeless youth. Sadly, once they turn 18 years of age all of the State supports, case management, all of it is turned off. There are no safe spaces for these girls and LGBTQIA+ youth! The youth homeless shelter has trafficking gang members watching for vulnerable youth to walk in the door. There are no homes for trafficked girls. We are the only nonprofit standing in the gap for this population and we need to keep the caseloads small enough that these girls can get the intensive case management they deserve.

HOPE Prison Mentoring Program (HOPE Mentoring)

This program was the first program implemented by Journey of Hope in 2014, with 17% recidivism in the first three years. Community Volunteers are trained in the Women’s Case Management Model (DOJ/NIC - Now called W-CCM, Collaborative Case Management) to follow Gender Responsive Guiding Principles, evidence-based principles. They are matched in pairs with a woman 3-6 months prior to her release from prison and they meet weekly or bi-weekly with the woman on a plan for her success when she walks out and back into the community. They then help her transition and are with her for up to 12 months while she overcomes barriers to housing, employment, treatment, reunification with children and safe family. 

This program has assisted hundreds of women walking out of the Utah State Prison, the State rate of recidivism is the highest in the nation at 80% for inmates with Dual-Diagnosis (addiction diagnosis and a mental health diagnosis.)  The majority of our prison population has a Dual Diagnosis, other than the male Sex Offender Unit, which is ⅓ of the men’s side of the Utah State Prison.   Our 17% rate shows that when women are safe, have the opportunity to make a livable wage, have access to trauma informed therapy, housing, and support they are powerfully resilient! We have saved the State taxpayers millions of dollars over the last five and a half years with this program. 

We have now been asked by UDC to expand the mentor program to the men's side of the prison.