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A view of the facility from the rooftop above the office area.[/caption]
Sojourner Family Peace Center
Executive Director: Carmen Pitre
619 W. Walnut St., Milwaukee
Staff: 130-150
New facility size: 72,000 square feet
Architect: Zimmerman Architectural Studios Inc.
Building cost: About $21 million
www.familypeacecenter.org
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Pitre[/caption]
Co-locating a cross sector of services
Within the new center, services will be provided by co-located partners: Sojourner Family Peace Center, the Milwaukee Police Department’s Sensitive Crimes Unit, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, Legal Action of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Public Schools, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Jewish Family Services of Milwaukee, Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare, Wraparound Milwaukee, Marquette University College of Nursing, and Aurora Health Care.
The center, which Sojourner anticipates will be move-in ready in December and fully operational in January, will be grounded by a social service perspective that incorporates law enforcement as it works to heal families ravaged by domestic abuse.
While some centers within the Family Justice Center model are law enforcement driven, Milwaukee’s infrastructure better warrants a social service emphasis in light of how advanced it is, according to Pitre.
Unlike many cities, Milwaukee has long had specializations that address sexual assault embedded in its police department and district attorney’s office. The Milwaukee Police Department contains a Sensitive Crimes Unit, and since 1975, the district attorney’s office has operated a specialty sexual assault unit that includes therapists who assist with the review of cases and outreach to sexual assault victims.
Milwaukee also has four specialty courts that hear nothing but sexual assault and homicide cases, and three additional courts that prosecute domestic violence and child abuse cases.
The Sojourner Family Peace Center’s focus on social services will build on those law enforcement specializations already in place while also tending to the long-term needs of survivors working to heal, a process that can take years.
“Social service agencies are better equipped to stay engaged with families as they’re on that journey of healing,” Pitre said.
This model “brings the best of both worlds together,” she added.
The new center will feature the Sojourner Truth House Shelter, with crisis housing for families in need. The shelter will contain 56 beds among single rooms, double rooms and 11 family rooms that can interconnect to accommodate larger families. The shelter will also include a full menu of amenities for those living there, including a living room for adults, a living room for teenagers, a café, a laundry room and a workout facility.
While the organization’s current shelter has two bathrooms for its residents, the new shelter will quadruple bathroom capacity with eight.
On the security side, the shelter will be staffed with a 24-hour security guard and will be outfitted with bullet-resistant glass and a security system through which visitors must be buzzed in.
The shelter, which hugs the corner of West Galena Street and Sixth Street, will also be surrounded by fencing and will sit atop a garage so that it is elevated off the ground.
“We tried to think as meaningfully as we could about the security features,” Pitre said, particularly as Sojourner Family Peace Center taps into a growing trend of hosting shelters at locations that are well-known and accessible in the community.
The reality, Pitre said, is that people know where the shelter is located or can find it through engines like Google Maps.
Operating the shelter more publicly “raises the bar,” Pitre said, as it pushes the community to take collective responsibility for the safety of women and families.
“It brings it out into the spotlight,” she said. “We can own it differently in the community.”
In addition to the shelter, the new facility will house Sojourner Family Peace Center’s case management services for survivors and children and those services that help survivors traverse the civil and criminal system.
Many of the center’s services catering specifically to youth will be headed by Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, which will provide physical, mental and dental services through its Child Advocacy Center.
Children’s Hospital also plans to staff the building with personnel from its Child Abuse Prevention Fund, which supports prevention measures in Wisconsin so children do not ever fall victim to abuse.
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The shelter housed within the center is elevated off the ground above a garage and includes security features such as bullet-resistant glass.[/caption]
The hospital will also locate Project Ujima at the new site, which helps young victims of abuse overcome their trauma and move beyond the cycle of violence.
Among the additional services to be made available at the Sojourner Family Peace Center:
Localizing the national model
Among the earliest advocates of an all-inclusive center like the one in the works was Bob Chernow, president of the Tellier Foundation, which supports Milwaukee County organizations and projects.
Chernow, a futurist, began thinking about how Milwaukee could innovate its approach to domestic violence after attending a World Future Society conference, where California police veteran Bob Harrison highlighted how he had reduced domestic violence incidents in Vacaville, Calif., by 68 percent over five years.
Harrison now serves as president of California-based consultancy ER Harrison & Associates Inc. and leads police organizations through workshops on team development, strategy and planning.
After three years of struggling to find a leader or agency that would listen to him, Chernow connected with Lovern on his vision to bring Harrison to Milwaukee for an assessment of city resources that respond to family violence.
Harrison studied Milwaukee’s landscape of resources for more than two years, an effort funded by the Tellier Foundation, and in 2007 presented his findings to about 70 key stakeholders during a meeting convened by Barrett and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm.
It was Harrison who pointed Milwaukee in the direction of the Family Justice Center model – a model that quickly piqued the interest of those attending the meeting.
For Chisholm, the model’s approach to snuffing violence, not just healing it, complemented his philosophy on how an elected prosecutor should engage with the community.
“It’s important that we respond to crimes as they occur and hold people accountable, but it’s every bit as important that we think to the long-term health and safety of the community, and that means engaging in processes like this where we think we can do something that will turn the problem around,” Chisholm said.
The following year, a team of Milwaukee leaders traveled to San Diego to attend the annual Family Justice Center Conference, see a Family Justice Center firsthand and connect with others running centers around the country.
The prospect of introducing a Family Justice Center to Milwaukee prompted a 2009 merger of the Task Force on Family Violence and Sojourner Truth House, which resulted in the Sojourner Family Peace Center.
From there, the new organization established a group to identify a proper site for the new facility, with priority on finding a location that would be near the courthouse, would be accessible via bus, and would be welcomed by the surrounding neighborhood.
After whittling the list of possibilities down from 50, Pitre said the selected site along West Walnut Street and Sixth Street was one the search group could not take off its list.
Sojourner Family Peace Center purchased the site from former owner Prince Hall Masons for $300,000 in late 2010 and demolished the Plymouth Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, which stood vacant on the property, in 2011.
When Pitre, Chisholm and Lovern approached Peggy Troy, chief executive officer of Children’s Hospital, and Bob Duncan, executive vice president, community services at the hospital, about a partnership opportunity three years ago, the hospital jumped aboard almost instantly. During initial discussions, Duncan said CHW recognized that the new center’s mission paralleled its own – to have the healthiest kids in the country living in Wisconsin.
It became apparent “that this is the right thing to do for our children and families,” he said.
In addition to contributing its child services to the Sojourner Family Peace Center, Children’s Hospital has been a significant funding force for the project. Thanks to a joint effort on the part of CHW and Sojourner, the center garnered a grant of up to $10.6 million from the State Building Commission at the end of 2013.
Pitre credits Troy and her team for listing the Sojourner Family Peace Center among their top priorities.
“Without her leadership, I don’t think this would have happened,” Pitre said.
In addition to state funds, $4.4 million for the project came from a New Market Tax Credit transaction, and more than $12 million was generated by donations to the Sojourner Courage Capital Campaign. The funding pot passed the campaign goal of $26.5 million in March.
Funds in excess of construction costs will be used to cover a decade of incremental operating costs for the building, according to Pitre.
Pitre said she has an “amazing sense of gratitude” for donors’ respect of Sojourner and its services, adding that the success of the capital campaign says something about people’s faith in the organization.
“We owe a great debt of gratitude to the founders before us that built such a strong foundation,” she said.
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The purple beam signed at the groundbreaking ceremony.[/caption]
Stopping the cycle of violence
Now, as Pitre stands before the center, a sense of awe tops her jumble of feelings on the project.
“I know what it’s like to be in awe – to be in awe of something – to be struck by awe,” she said.
She also knows her job is far from over.
“Now, we have the work of really sewing together the fabric of our services and looking at how we all need to change to better serve families,” Pitre said.
Once Sojourner Family Peace Center opens, one of the first steps will be ensuring a seamless continuation of services for the organization’s client base, which last year exceeded 8,500 women, children and men.
The long-term vision emphasizes extinguishing the generational cycle of violence that domestic abuse breeds – an observation Lovern has made personally during his career of prosecuting domestic violence cases and gun and gang offenders.
“As we would analyze the history of those young offenders who were committing violent crimes, we were seeing that many of these young men were coming out of households that were afflicted by domestic violence or child abuse or neglect,” Lovern said.
Delivering services that get at the root causes of family struggles, identifying warning signals of family violence at earlier stages, and treating children at earlier stages of family conflict will be key in preventing violence among future generations, he said.
To measure outcomes of the new center, Sojourner is assembling a committee that will establish which metrics should be measured and can be measured, and how different clients define success.
To Pitre, success will be gauged as the center’s partners find new ways to work together so families are reaching out for help earlier in the cycle of violence, more young people are engaged in curbing violence, and partners have more robust conversations about their roles in keeping families healthy.
“I think we have good will,” Pitre said. “I think we have good relationships, and I think families deserve this integrated services model. And I believe we’ll get there.”
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Pictured at the project groundbreaking in October 2014 (from left): Bea Benidt Webster, Charles E. Benidt Family Foundation; Casey Gwinn, Alliance for HOPE International; Bob Duncan, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin; Michelle Mettner, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin; Rebecca House, Harley-Davidson and Sojourner board president; Gov. Scott Walker; Mayor Tom Barrett; Carmen Pitre, Sojourner Family Peace Center; Kent Lovern, Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office and Sojourner board member; Chief Edward Flynn, Milwaukee Police Department; Milwaukee County District Attorney, John Chisholm; and Cecelia Gore, Brewers Community Foundation.[/caption]
