Wynona's House

Wynona's House is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that facilitates a comprehensive community response to child abuse and neglect a united voice to help protect our most vulnerable. Celebrating our 22nd year of service to the community, we have provided services to 11,196 child victims in 11,597 cases and served more than 20,556 of their non-offending siblings, family members and caretakers. In this report year, our strategic public and private partnerships provided comprehensive services to 866 child victims in 936 cases and served 1,873 of their non-offending siblings, family members and caretakers. Our team provided 164 forensic video interviews this report year. The level and complexity of case work has increased system-wide, and case counts are surpassing pre-pandemic levels. In the family advocacy program, we are witnessing dramatic increase in the typical number of non-offending siblings, parents, and caretakers who receive supportive services to improve family resilience. Wynona's House is made up of an extraordinary partnership of expert child protection, law enforcement, medical doctors and nurses, child and family advocates, and mental health providers. Beginning with the report of abuse or neglect, followed by investigation and prosecution phases, intake, triage and multidisciplinary team coordination of services are conducted and continue through treatment, healing, and recovery phases. We provide wrap-around services including case management, crisis intervention, and leveraging our network of resources for children and families in need. In a typical year, we serve approximately 950 child victims and 1,100 non-offending siblings, parents and caretakers and connect them to community-based support and assistance such as counseling, medical care, housing, domestic violence, safety concerns, educational issues, employment, financial assistance, food, clothing, and other basic needs. Wynona's House is the only fully co-located child advocacy center in new jersey, with law enforcement, medical, mental health, child protection and family advocacy services in one location, with selected services available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All services are delivered at no cost to our clients. The family advocacy program (fap) provides extended service to families to ensure long-term healing, recovery, and family strengthening, for as long as they are in need, including after other partner services have been terminated. Through our family advocate volunteer initiative (favi), Wynona's House provides services to an identified, underserved subset of our clients, a ground-breaking and cost-effective community-based effort to identify and support additional families who would benefit from the center's wrap-around services. The project recruits, vets, trains, and guides community volunteers to provide expert assessment, case planning and ongoing support to ensure that families receive and make use of the full array of support required to help their children heal and recover from child abuse. The project continues to strengthen families through one-on-one support. Through the family advocacy volunteer initiative to-date, we have provided information and support to 320 families who were not currently engaged in fap services. In july 2018, Wynona's House launched a polyvictimization initiative, working with families from our existing case load, to better identify and support families experiencing additional victimization including domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. In 2019, we further expanded polyvictimization services to child victims and their families at risk for or victims of human trafficking. As anticipated, the resulting demand for services was significant; we have served 236 families experiencing other types of victimization while responding to their child abuse or neglect victimization. Cross-training provided to the multi-disciplinary team has helped create a more comprehensive and integrated multi-disciplinary team approach. In september 2019, Wynona's House launched a medical and mental health project to improve service, increase access and better connect clients with essential medical and mental health services, and to connect our multi-disciplinary team members with vital mental health services and support for vicarious trauma endured while in service to our clients. The project is flourishing, with a great deal of community engagement and participation. Staff continue to utilize vicarious trauma support services to help them contend with the trauma they are exposed to routinely. In response to covid-19, we developed and launched a pandemic response plan in 2020, an initiative designed to respond quickly and effectively to the covid-19 pandemic to ensure health and well-being and increase the capacity to respond to the dramatically increased need in the community we serve. The fully integrated plan, developed in collaboration with the multi-disciplinary team leadership, ensures minimizing risk through implementation of cdc and other best-practice controls including engineering, administrative and personal protection equipment. We ensure the implementation daily, conduct periodic monitoring and review, and update as needed based upon the best available data and information, with a goal of an abundance of caution. The pandemic response project leveraged an array of funding and in-kind support to protect our clients, staff, and visitors, while simultaneously increasing support to our children and families. During this time, the family advocacy program (fap) witnessed a substantial increase in the level of services each family needs and the complexity of cases. With the intersection of the ongoing impact of the covid-19 pandemic, economic downturn, and social unrest, the needs of families at risk have increased dramatically. In april 2022, we formally kicked of an initiative called "prevention by design" as part of our child abuse prevention month activities. The project will expand the center's child maltreatment prevention efforts by creating and implementing an action plan to design a formal child abuse prevention program with structured supporting systems, humanistic and polyvictimization frameworks, evidence-based programming, education for professionals and students, community conversations and listening tours, outreach and engagement, leadership development, and project evaluation. The center's work will be augmented to include prevention as an essential and intentional component of our traditional response and treatment service model. The new community-based model will improve outcomes for children and families in essex county by better utilizing protective factors, identifying and reducing risks to children, increasing awareness and education, and enhancing parental resilience through ensuring access to mental health clinical services and other evidence-based prevention programming. Beginning in 2017/2018, Wynona's House has undertaken a multi-year trauma-informed facility improvement initiative to raise funds and address urgent needs within our facility to improve and increase service delivery to child victims of abuse and to ensure that the facility exceeds standards, including accreditation of our national accrediting body, the national children's alliance. The trauma-informed facility improvement initiative has been highly successful: to-date, we have completed more than $1,115,500 worth of facility, workspace, and technology improvements. Projects included renovation of the space occupied by our law enforcement partner, including new walls, painting, new flooring, new ceiling tiles, a new restroom and two new workstations. Other projects include two (2) new offices, fourteen (14) new workstations, a serenity room, a family resource center, and an additional a.d.a. Accessible entrance in the rear of the building. Additionally, as part of our covid-19 safety response, we have upgraded our hvac systems with nine (9) ionization units, installed higher mrv filters, installed fifteen (15) various-sized air purifiers throughout the center, added temperature scanners at each entrance (3) and installed cough and workstation screens throughout the center. We converted two (2) spaces for providing secure, remote delivery of services during the pandemic. We also invested in our information technology infrastructure to help our child advocates and other professionals work better, easier, and safer to protect our data and ensure continuity of service. In 2021, we implemented a proactive plan to protect and defend the facility and our technology from climate variability/changes and improve our resiliency to address weather-related impacts. We have undertaken several projects to protect against water intrusion in the basement, building envelope, and roof, and have relocated our server room. In 2022, we will complete the full replacement of the roof systems and continue re-pointing and waterproofing.