Family Justice Center In The Works

Victims of domestic violence may soon have a ​“one-stop shopping” location where they can receive help.

That’s the dream of Greater New Haven’s Umbrella Center for Domestic Violence Services.

The Umbrella Center has received two two-year $25,000 annual grants — from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and the Michael Bolton Charities — to hire a part-time coordinator to develop a new ​“family justice center” where victims would find legal, counseling housing, and employment help.

Such centers have been sprouting up across the country since the first one formed in San Diego 13 years ago.

“We’re dreaming big and starting small,” said one of the organizers, Barbara Bellucci.

Bellucci, an Umbrella family violence victim advocate supervisor, spoke at length about the family justice center project and domestic violence prevention efforts during an interview Tuesday on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. She was joined by Umbrella Community Services Coordinator Cindy Carlson.

Bellucci is one of five Umbrella staffers who work with 4,000 domestic-violence victims each year involved in cases at the Elm Street courthouse. She has been in the job for 27 years; during that time she has has also worked with legislators on public-policy changes regarding handling of domestic violence. She traced the state’s progress since the 1984 landmark case filed by repeated beating victim Tracey Thurman (read about that here), which led to a law mandating arrests of alleged batterers when probable cause exists. The state contracted with Umbrella to station advocates like Bellucci at courthouses. Groups like the Umbrella Center have worked regularly with local police departments to make ​“lethality assessments” at domestic-violence calls and to avoid ​“dual arrests,” formerly a common practice in which cops arrested both batterers and victims. Battered women’s shelters, a relatively new phenomenon decades ago, are now common. Carlson said Umbrella — which serves 19 communities in Greater New Haven, including in the Naugatuck Valley — houses an average of 100 adults and 100 children each year, usually for months at a time, at its two safe houses.

In addition, advocates succeeded in increasing penalties for domestic violence that includes strangulation, a common part of attacks. Now they’re focusing on convincing the legislature to have cops, not sheriffs, serve temporary restraining orders, at least in cases involving guns. An estimated 40 percent of restraining orders in domestic violence cases never get served. Gun advocates helped kill a version of the proposal during last year’s legislative session; it was the only one of State Senate President Martin Looney’s 10 top-priority bills that failed to become law.

Family justice centers are one next step in the evolution of domestic violence advocates’ efforts. Read more about them here.

Bellucci said Umbrella hopes by the spring to have hired the part-time coordinator to plan the new center. To learn more about the position, or for information about other ways to support the project, call Umbrella at (203)736‑2601 # 1381.

Click on or download the above sound file to hear the full WNHH interview with Bellucci and Carlson.

Today’s episode of ​“Dateline New Haven” was made possible in part through support from Yale-New Haven Hospital.