Last week, YWCA Spokane sent out a fundraising appeal that touted its work on behalf of domestic violence victims. It said the number of people seeking the agency’s help for legal issues has gone way up, especially during the last year.
Sally Winn knows more about that. She’s the YWCA’s director of legal services.
Sally Winn: They're looking for more than just how the court works or things like that. They're actually looking for assistance with domestic violence civil protection orders, or they may need family law support to get divorced from their perpetrator or have a parenting plan in place. That's when they come to our civil legal department to get those services. We have other much more supportive court services, but that specifically is the department that it's talking about.
Doug Nadvornick: What sorts of services can you offer?
SW: Every day we take intakes. Our intake is open pretty much 24-7. And in that intake you can tell us what kind of relationship it is. We do need it to be intimate partner violence for it to qualify. But if it's any kind of high lethality case, if it's ‘I need protection immediately,’ then we can work with our other departments to make sure that the individual is protected and their family is protected while we are going to court and seeking them legal protection under a civil protection order.
If they are wanting to just move forward with a divorce, say they've already left and they feel safe but they need to break free from this, then we'll actually walk them through the processes of which forms to file.
We can represent them up until the stage of their trial. We don't have the capacity for trials at this point, but we can help them get the right temporary orders in place and everything and get them on the right track. We'll help them prepare binders and whatever they need for court, but we just can't support going to court with our attorneys. Because on top of that, we also have the various parenting plans and things like that. So that's our intake process online.
Also we are having legal clinics Friday—First Step Friday legal clinics. These are where people can come in immediately, right then, right there. If they're an intimate partner, violent relationship, they can come to us. We will see them that very day, that very morning. They get a half an hour with a legal professional to find out kind of what the next steps are and if it turns out they're going to need us to support them beyond just that initial visit, then we go ahead and take them in through the process and they become our full clients.
But we want to make sure that the people who just have questions about, I don't know which to file first or I don't know which form to file, they can get immediate answers that day and walk away with some knowledge. Or if they need to have a protection order, we can help them fill it out that day and they can walk over to court that afternoon to ex parte and get it filed.
DN: So if I read this email right, it sounds like you're getting a lot more business than you have in the past.
SW: We are. There have been a few closures in the area with regard to family services. I know volunteer lawyers who are now Inland Empire Legal Aid have had to cut back. Some other places have had cut back on their practice. So we're seeing a bigger influx. That plus domestic violence rises every year and the need is constant and increasing.
Last year we averaged, over the year, 70 intakes a month. This year in the first four months, 101 intakes a month. Plus the addition of these legal clinics every single Friday, which bring in another 12 to 15 people every Friday. So our numbers have nearly doubled just in the first four months of this year and we're still operating with the same grants we had last year, the same staff we had last year and we're doing our very best to navigate it as best as we can.
DN: So what are the reasons for all the funding cutbacks, not only at the other organizations, let's say?
SW: I'm not sure what all of their individual reasons are. Some of them are pro bono attorneys. I don't know if the change in the financial climate with various changes that have happened are impacting their ability to offer pro bono work. But as an organization that is funded specifically for this work, I know that from Office of Civil Legal Aid, we get half of our budget from that. And they have been great at being supportive. But they're Washington-based.
Our LAV grant, which is Legal Assistance for Victims, which comes out of Washington, it was touchy for a while and we were very concerned. We get those for two or three years at a time. But we don't know if they're coming back the next time. So we're just trying very hard to pivot where we can, maybe diversify some of the support.
We'd love it if we could get more private support so that we can continue these programs regardless of what the people in Washington decide to say. Because the clients need our help regardless of what's going on in the rest of the world.
DN: So your funding stays pretty much the same. You've got more people coming in. How does that affect your ability to do the job and help those folks?
SW: It means we're taking on more clients. We're having to prioritize which clients we focus on first. It used to be we could take pretty much anybody who came through the door, you know, barring any conflict.
Now we have to pay attention to what are the lethality factors. Are they in a highly lethal situation? Those will always take priority. Are they dealing with some sort of access to court issue? Is there a language barrier? Or is there a disability barrier of some sort where they need an attorney's assistance to come in? Or if there's an opposing party, if he's able to hire an attorney—because quite often it's the man, quite often they have access to the finances and they're able to afford an attorney, but the survivor in the relationship is not. Those are ones we want to be able to come up so they're not being re-traumatized in court by the opposing party's attorney.
We're doing our best, but I can tell you we are really kind of busting at the seams. I have a couple of people who want to come in part-time and help out. I'm leaning more and more on Rule 9 interns from Gonzaga. These interns are not the brand-new interns, but the ones who have already passed the ethics requirements to become an attorney and they just need supervision.
We're doing everything we can to lean into that and finding ways that we can support more of those folks. We're looking at everything we can to try and reach as many people as possible while not lowering our standards of service, while really still making it meaningful for them to get help.
We've also had a couple of clinics. We had one at Mujeres in Action. We had one at Manzanita House. For some of the communities that maybe don't feel as comfortable coming into our services, we will come out to them and we're looking forward to doing that as well more and more.
But it's finding the balance of how are we reaching the most people, offering the most amount of help, and getting the most people through the process of court with the best outcome possible where their voices can be heard.
DN: You said you're getting more cases, more demand for that. Is that more people becoming familiar with your services or the problem of domestic violence is getting worse in Spokane?
SW: Probably a combination of both. I've been in this role for three years, and during those three years, we've undergone some big changes to try and make sure that we have our work out there, our names out there. We're working on our reputation to make sure people know we're here consistently, and we're going to be here whether it's the fourth time you're leaving or the eighth time you're leaving. So I think that's a small part of it.
But I think really if you look at the statistics of domestic violence within the county and within the city, it's increasing every year. And so it's a combination of both people know that we're there and we're trusted. At the same time, there's more of the people looking for it.
DN: So what would help you the most?
SW: What would help me the most is really finding ways to help support our work. Ideally, it would be financially in whatever capacity possible. Even just having an intern for the summer, which is like, $10,000, that helps.
People think, ‘Oh, legal help must be so expensive.’ We're not. We're in nonprofit work. We just need to be able to build the capacity to keep going, regardless of what the various dictates and executive orders and things like that, how that may negatively impact our funding. We need to still be able to offer the work because this is beyond politics. This is beyond funding discussions. These are about individuals and their families who are trying to be safe and get their power back and get their voice back.
We still have the capacity to help people, so I want to make sure people definitely hear that even though we are getting tighter on our capacity, we will always find a way to try and help you where you are if we can.
