Julie Johnson Photos
Participants at the recent planning session.
Members of the Board of Alders received an update about efforts to launch a one-stop Family Justice Center as one part of a plan to decrease domestic violence in the city.
And they’ll soon hear a lot more from that future center’s project coordinator Julie Johnson. Alders will get to hear the plans for the center in an upcoming meeting of the Public Safety Committee
Julie Johnson.
Johnson, a retired New Haven Police Department captain, has been working with BHcare and the Umbrella Center for Domestic Violence Services to help establish a family justice center. New city Police Chief Anthony Campbell has made the establishment of the center and the quest to combat domestic violence a top priority.
The Umbrella Center held a two-day planning session for the future family justice center last month to bring professionals involved in domestic violence reduction work together.
The team of people trying to stop family violence.
Johnson stated in a press release that the family justice center will have a team of those professionals with different backgrounds under one roof to provide coordinated services for victims of family violence. But first money and a building have to be found to make the center a reality.
Campbell
“The core concept is to provide one place where victims can go to talk to an advocate, plan for their safety, interview with a police officer, meet with a prosecutor, receive medical assistance, receive information on shelter, and get help with transportation,” she said. “The Family Justice Center model has been identified as a best practice in the field of domestic violence intervention and prevention services by the U.S. Department of Justice.
“There are many documented and published outcomes in the Family Justice Center model including reduced homicides, increased victim safety and reduced fear and anxiety for victims and their children,” Johnson added.
Campbell, Johnson and command staff at 1 Union Ave.
The Family Justice Center is a community project and anyone interested in learning more or getting involved should contact Johnson at (203) 203- 780‑2033 or [email protected]. Following The New Haven Family Justice Center at www.facebook.com/NewHavenFJC and www.twitter.com/NHFJC_CT.
If you need immediate domestic violence assistance, please call our 24-hour domestic violence hotline 1 – 888-774- 2900. UCDVS is a program of BHcare that provides services for victims and children of domestic violence free of charge. Each year, over 6,000 abused women and their children walk through the door of UCDVS looking for shelter, help and hope. Learn more at www.bhcare.org.
This is a wonderful development and I hope it works.
Police know that statistically, a domestic violence call is the most dangerous one, with many police casualties.
The safety of women and children should be a basic goal in any society.
Children who grow up watching their mother bullied and assaulted may get involved in trying to protect their mother and risk injury themselves or can grow up with a life long disability in terms of brain development or stunted relationships. Some even become abusers themselves.
The longer violence is left without a response, the more it escalates over time.
That we still need shelters for women and children, however, bothers me.
There are shelters for the abusers. They are called jails. While I generally would like to dismantle the entire incarceration system as cruel and abusive, until we follow the progressive rehabilitation methods found in Norway, temporary separation from the family should leave the victims in their homes and the abuser elsewhere.