Local News
Email
Print
Safe on Seven trying to replace grant money
It plans to continue operating, coordinator says, despite losing $400,000 in federal financing
Tom Keith, the Forsyth County district attorney, was informed of the funding reduction.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: November 4, 2009
Updated: 11/04/2009 12:05 am
Safe on Seven, a program that helps victims of domestic violence, will continue to operate despite losing a federal grant worth nearly $400,000.
The program used money from the grant to help pay four employees, said Alison Cranford, the program's coordinator.
The program has an office on the seventh floor of the Forsyth County Hall of Justice.
Its 36-member staff works with mostly women and teenage girls. The program had an 18 percent increase in clients from 2007 to 2008. The program had 1,098 clients in 2007, and 1,329 last year.
For the first nine months of 2009, staff members have seen 1,359 clients, a 44 percent increase from the same period in 2008, Cranford said.
Since it started in 2005, the program has served about 5,000 clients.
"Unless we get some alternate funding, it will hamper our ability to serve clients and give them services in an efficient manner," Cranford said. "It could mean that we lose those positions."
The center has received about $130,000 this year from the Governor's Crime Commission. It also received about $100,000 from the commission in 2007.
Safe on Seven provides one location for agencies that help victims of domestic violence. The program began in October 2005 after it received a grant of nearly $400,000 from the Office on Violence Against Women in the U.S. Department of Justice.
The center's staff members are mostly employees of such agencies as the Forsyth County District Attorney's Domestic Violence Unit, Legal Aid of North Carolina Inc., the Forsyth County Clerk of Court, the WSSU Center for Community Safety, the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office and the Winston-Salem Police Department.
Those agencies are looking for money to help fill the gap, said Cranford, who is also an employee of Family Services.
Safe on Seven learned in September that it would lose the money, Cranford said.
Catherine Pierce, the acting director of the Office on Violence Against Women, sent a letter to Tom Keith, the Forsyth County district attorney, telling him that Congress allocated $60 million this year to provide money for local programs that encourage domestic-violence victims to have their abusers arrested. Pierce said that her office had received 228 grant applications, totaling $104.36 million.
"Because we received more applications than we were able to financially support, we regret that your project was not selected for funding at this time," Pierce wrote to Keith.
jhinton@wsjournal.com
727-7299
Email
Print
