Since 1976, The Coalition has provided victims of family violence with the means to help them escape their life of abuse - and for over 30 years, we have operated a 24-hour bilingual crisis hotline to enable their first step toward a better life.

As we assisted more and more victims, we realized that we needed to implement a variety of services - essentially, a continuum of care - to optimize their best chance of a permanent, successful transition to an abuse-free existence.

Thus, a primary Coalition focus is not only directly helping the victim but eliminating violence in the home, underscored by our development of a comprehensive range of shelter-based programs for adult victims, parents, and at-risk youth - all of which are available in Spanish and English.

The shelter is a 30-day emergency residential program for battered women and their children. Often, people arrive at our shelter with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. The Coalition provides food, clothing, personal care items, and assistance with medical and transportation issues. Additionally, our food pantry provides non-perishable items to families well after they have left the shelter.

Because we believe a continuum of care is necessary to treat the clients holistically, we provide individual counseling, support groups, parenting classes, legal representation, access to transitional housing and after-school resources. As with all legal representation, access to transitional housing and after-school resources. As with all Coalition services for domestic violence victims and their children, the shelter stay is free.

Since 1977, The Coalition has operated a 24-hour bilingual crisis hotline to assist victims of domestic violence (and sexual assault) through which we traditionally field an average of 213 non-duplicated (first-time caller) calls per month. In addition, we receive an average of 58 crisis calls per month through our main office, 25 calls come through our Crisis response Team, for a total average of 296 crisis calls per month.

Of these, between 70 and 82 percent become clients within our agency, with the remaining calls being referred out. That total amount of duplicated and non-duplicated calls we receive averages between 1,000 and 1,600 per month. These calls represent a mix of crisis response, referrals and over-the phone clinical assessments.

The Coalition have available 24/7, a team which will arrive at the scene of domestic violence within 15 minutes of a call from law enforcement to provide advocacy and emergency intervention for the victim. This is a crucial time for the victim - she has reached a point in her life where she says "enough is enough," making it imperative for us to have the right tools to convince her to make a change for the better.

Having created our own unique curriculum, we instituted the Family Harmony Program to give families a more nurturing home environment by helping parents develop better communication and parenting skills.

The pilot program for Ventura County's differential response, Family Harmony - conducted by licenses marriage and family therapists, and interns - is a 12-week program. Along with mentoring the parents to assist them in creating a thriving environment - including infant/parent bonding exercises.

The inability to afford legal representation is one of the main reasons many choose to stay I a desperate situation. It is imperative for us to implement a legal service program for our shelter residents and other Coalition clients.

One of our sites is at the Government Center, the result of a strong alliance with the District Attorney's Office. Priority is given to cases involving child custody, abduction, domestic violence and stalking. Clients are assisted with all phases of their court case including pleading preparation, emergency protective orders, restraining orders, and filing of court papers. In 2007, we provided legal services for 960 victims.

Since the lack of financial resources is a commonly identified barrier to a woman who wants to leave her batterer, we offer as many free programs and services as possible. This includes ten (10) free consecutive counseling sessions. Our counseling staff - comprised of interns and trainees - is supervised by licenses marriage and family therapists, social workers and psychologists.

Each weekly counseling session is dedicated to helping the domestic violence victim transition from feeling like she is to blame, to knowing she isn't; from believing she is dependent on the abuser, to realizing she has the power to change her life for the better.

Our counseling goal - as well as that of our free support groups - is to help empower the victim to choose to live abuse-free, rather than her become part of the statistic that a battered women returns to her abuser an average of seven times.