The YWCA Monterey County

The Ywca Monterey County began The fiscal year 21-22 with The development of The Monterey County human trafficking task force, to create and support a collaborative effort among law enforcement, prosecutors, substance use services, medical providers, and victim service providers as well as educate community partners by utilizing a whole systems approach to deliver sustainable changes for The health and wellbeing of survivors of human trafficking. We achieve this by providing outreach and prevention awareness education; assist and improve efforts to investigate and prosecute human trafficking law violations; and provide qualitative and quantitative data to impact local and national policy making.in The same fiscal year, we increased The number of trainings and seminars related to ht and we were able to include health care professionals from all four hospitals in The County. Through The partnership with jal we were also able to deliver training to young people around identification and victimization of youth by ht traffickers. Similarly, we are aware of The wealth and breadth of response of domestic violence in Monterey County and with funding from packard foundation we were able to develop a whole systems approach to working with clients who have encountered domestic violence; we did this through multi agency trainings and presentations and raising awareness of The work of The Monterey County domestic violence coordinating council. Domestic violence comes in many forms and one of The most common is financial control; The majority of our clients have found themselves to be victims of either fraud or identify theft, which often has a lifelong effect. Funding from all state foundation allowed us to introduce a financial literacy program, by repairing credit and understanding The impact of debt as The result of financial abuse through coercion. In The first year we supported 112 women and 20 high-school age students. As we began to emerge from The pandemic housing and access to housing has become even more crucial; we took a lease on a larger property to service our step-down program. This increased our capacity, and we were able to serve five women and four children in that period who had reached a level of stability in their lives after receiving crisis intervention. All children were able to report settling into schools while we worked with The mothers to obtain permanent accommodation over a sustained period of time. For The first time in Ywca Monterey County we applied for and were awarded funding from hud (federal housing program) to cover The cost of rent using fair market value of rentals in The area for 18 families. In order to become true allies of lgbtq+ community we secured a contract with epicenter to deliver trainings to our staff and The wider community on working with lgbtq+ community. This fiscal year we were able to increase The number of bilingual therapists in our clinical department to address The growing number of clients seeking our services. Coming out of The pandemic we saw an increase in The number of children who were living in homes where domestic violence was a common occurrence. Two of our masters level therapists now specialize in working with people under The age of 16. Our crisis line also continued to see an increase in demand and The first monday of The december holidays in 2021 we had 136 calls to The crisis line. Our legal department, with The addition of a former deputy district attorney, began to offer screening for immigration services. Two staff members underwent intensive trainings over several months to allow us to screen and make appropriate referrals to partner agencies in The County and beyond. Also in The legal department, and also as a result of The emergence from The pandemic, we saw a significant increase in The number of clients seeking support for divorce and custody related issues.during The year ended june 30, 2023, there were 3 accomplishments:(1) development of human trafficking task force bringing together over 30 local partners from criminal justice to other service providers. (2) for The first time, we received federal funds for our housing program from hud in a competitive round of funding. (3) brought together 4 keynote speakers to introduce concept of asset based community development to Monterey County. Keynote expert in field and from ireland. Over 150 people participated from across us and europe.