Women Against Abuse Named WOMEN’S WAY Action Partner

Women Against Abuse was thrilled to be awarded through the WOMEN’S WAY Action Partners grantmaking program to begin implementing plans for a coordinated community response to domestic vioelnce in Philadelphia. Women Against Abuse, the Women’s Law Project and Women Organized Against Rape will receive $240,000 in funding from 2015-2017 to implement a project designed to propel systems change in the way that city entities identify and respond to domestic violence.

The work of Women Against Abuse, the Women’s Law Project and Women Organized Against Rape has led to major shifts in the police, prosecution, probation, and judicial responses to sexual and domestic violence in Philadelphia. With dedicated funding from the WOMEN’S WAY Action Partners program, the organizations will expand their collaborative efforts to engage health and human service providers, including the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disabilities Services (DBHIDS) of the City of Philadelphia, to ensure that domestic-violence screenings and trauma-informed interventions and referrals are integrated into systems that are likely to encounters survivors of gender-based violence.

Throughout the three-year funding period, the collaborative will develop a gender-based violence screening tool that identifies physical, emotional, sexual and economic violence, as well as measures the risk of lethality in interpersonal situations faced by individuals currently interfacing with health and human service agencies. In coordination with the screening tool, the collaborative will train staff at the Department of Human Services and DBHIDS on intimate partner violence, sexual assault and reproductive coercion, as well as dynamics of abuse, barriers to care, and practical information about screening and interventions. The organizations will also develop and advocate for a policy to be adopted by health and human services providers to ensure accountability measures.

Romana Lee-Akiyama, Director of Grantmaking and Diversity & Inclusion for WOMEN’S WAY, said, “We are proud to support such impactful organizations working on some of the most pressing issues facing women and girls in our region. Their proposed collaboration will help ensure that more women get the services they need to live free from violence and thrive.”

The WOMEN’S WAY Action Partners program was re-imagined in 2014 to support a cohort of high-performing women-led and women-focused organizations working on a collaborative project that systematically addresses at least two of WOMEN’S WAY’s four issue areas: gender-based violence, economic self-sufficiency, reproductive freedom and health care access, and the leadership of girls and young women.

Women Against Abuse's selection as Women’s Way’s Action 2.0 partners is an extraordinary opportunity to advance our advocacy on behalf of those who have experienced interpersonal violence. Together, we will develop new policies and tools that will allow health and human services providers across the city to identify those who have experienced intimate partner violence and make sure they receive appropriate services.

“Along with Philadelphia nonprofits and city departments, we recently completed a five-year strategic plan to develop a coordinated community response to the public health epidemic of domestic violence. The tools developed with support from Women’s Way will enhance this work, and serve as a model resource for others seeking to address gender-based violence,” said Jeannine L. Lisitski, Executive Director of Women Against Abuse. "No other metropolitan area in the United States has a citywide coordinated response to domestic violence at the scale and depth that this plan advances. Philadelphia can lead the way.”