The Chicago Cook County Violence Against Women Task Force to Order.

So good morning, everybody.

Um, Amy, are there any registered public speakers?

There is Sarah Brown.

Are you here?

Okay.

Any other registered public speakers?

No.

Did you sign up?

Okay, perfect.

Then you can come to the right.

Oh, that's the end of that.

Members of the public who wish to testify have until twenty-four hours before the schedule started the meeting to register in order to do so.

Speakers will have three minutes to address the task force and will be alerted when they have one minute time remaining, when thirty seconds remain, and when the time has expired.

And this detective, the one that was giving the classes, almost we just needed one day to finish the course, and he started telling everybody that it was okay to abuse the woman to him and abuse him.

And I was like listening.

And I'm like, am I listening right to what this detective is telling all his students?

And I raised my hand and I said, you know what?

It's not okay to abuse women, children, men, or anybody.

And he goes like, um, I don't know, I don't remember what he said.

And then I turned back.

There was a man sitting in back a minute, and I go, oh, honey, you know what?

I love being beaten up, beat me up.

And the man in fact me said, I don't speak English.

I'm like, wait, who from this class speaks English?

They only three persons spoke English.

This detective is giving an English class, concealed weapon to non-speaking, they're the majority, all were his family.

That is a really concern for me, especially when he starts saying that it's okay to be to feed up the woman.

Um, I don't know.

I did go to Tabaris' office.

He's still doing the service, he's still working there, giving the concealed weapons.

Is he still telling the people that it's okay to beat up woman?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, I can include your public speakers.

Thank you.

Thanks again for your testimony.

Okay, thank you all for your willingness to serve on this task force.

I wanted to acknowledge my colleagues who are also here in the room, Commissioner Anaya, Commissioner Degnan, Commissioner McCaskill.

So thank you all for being here.

Were there any other elected officials in the room?

No.

Okay.

Okay, Commissioner Stamps just walked in.

Thank you all for being here.

So now Katie Dunn has been helping us organize and facilitate these meetings.

And I wanted to just get right into the presentation.

So Katie will assist in introducing our presenters.

Thank you, Katie.

Fantastic.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Our first presenter is from the network advocating against domestic violence.

Her name is Madeline Fairer, and she is going to present on what the network does in Kirk County Flux.

Morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Like Katie said, I'm here to present on the role of the network in the DV services sector community and within our county system.

Data on the services that are requested and utilized by DB survivors in the county and give an overall landscape of different government funding for these services and share some recommendations for the task force.

So we are a convener and organizer of the GBV services community and of survivors broadly.

We do this through policy and systems advocacy.

We're the organization that drafted and led the campaign to pass Corina's law to improve our firearms relief for survivors.

We also will do things like conduct research and gather data on the sector and survivor needs and emerging issues through a measuring safety series.

We offer technical assistance and training for advocates, legal aid attorneys, the private bar, and allied professionals.

And we operate system-wide services that partner organizations and the public utilize, like the Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline and the Survivor Fund and more.

Many are part of Cook County and kind of the Chicagoland area, but we have some as well in the collar counties.

And my team specifically is with the policy advocacy and research team.

Like I had said, we gather data and do research reports on our hotline data.

We gather data from the state around services that are provided to survivors across the state.

And we overall try and have reports that seek to capture a moment in time for what the DB sector is looking like and what survivors are looking for or experiencing.

So we've had reports in the past on domestic gun violence.

We're looking at future reports around immigration, the pretrial fairness act, and a whole host of other topics.

We engage in legislative and budget advocacy at the city, county, and state government levels, working to organize our survivor and service provider community to fight for change and funding.

We helped organize a campaign in Chicago to continue funding gender-based violence services after the ARPA CLIF.

This led to the largest investment ever in GBV services by Chicago.

So big big thank you to the folks at DFSS.

I think I saw maybe Danny here today.

So shout out to DFSS.

We are also members of the mayor's gender-based violence advisory task force.

We also do state legislative advocacy.

We also engage in systems advocacy focusing on implementation issues.

We develop advocacy guides.

We're part of different implementation working groups like the one here in Cook County on Karina's Law.

We also are part of the domestic violence committee that has been brought back by the Office of the Chief Judge.

And we have quarterly meetings with the Sheriff's Office and we regularly meet with the CPD GBB team.

So as part of our work as kind of a systems level advocacy organization, we really are working to improve court operations and improve our laws and systems overall.

I think Amy had handed out different kinds of process maps that we created to illustrate what the civil and criminal court process is like for a survivor to get an order of protection here in Cook County.

We sent these to all of the commissioner offices last fall after the hearings that were focused on domestic relations and some of the mid-year budget hearings.

But wanted to mention again that these maps exist and they can use can be used as a resource to better understand our court system for survivors seeking an OP.

I also want to note as we continue some of these conversations around the role of an advocate and attorneys at different courthouses.

A survivor can represent themselves in an order of protection case, but anecdotally, they'll likely have better outcomes if they have a legal advocate with them or an attorney, either legal aid or private bar attorney with them.

And for domestic relations cases that are often more complex because you're dealing with family law as well as the Illinois Domestic Violence Act.

Um, a survivor will likely have better outcomes if they specifically have an attorney because of the complexity of those cases.

Can you just say that OP is order of protection?

Yes, and OP is an order of protection.

Thank you so much, Christopher.

Um, as part of our research and data work, so we have two primary sets of data that we utilize the hotline data, which is something that we own because we operate the Illinois domestic violence hotline.

So we can assess and kind of create data sets from things that are gathered by our hotline staff.

And we also gather services data that is gathered by the state criminal justice information authority, so ICEGA through what they call Infonet.

I'm going to go through some of our 2024 hotline data first and then get into some of the services data that we have.

So the hotline is available 24-7 via call, text, and chat.

We work to connect survivors with resources like available shelter beds, legal advocacy, legal aid, counseling, and more.

We also are partners on the after hours or order of protection program to help callers after hours file for an order of protection.

And in the fall, when ICE first came to the courthouse, we were working with county staff like the clerk's office and other folks to move order of protection filings remote through the hotline if survivors were feel fearful of coming to court.

But if you look at the data specifically for 2024, we have just under 60,000 contacts received that year.

It's a 26% increase from 2023.

But overall, it's 140% increase since pre-pandemic 2019.

So we are seeing more and more survivors reach out for support and information and services.

It's really crucial to understand that the growth in these contexts doesn't necessarily indicate an increase in domestic violence itself, but more often a heightened awareness of available resources and a greater willingness to engage in services.

So we can break these down a little bit further, not only by Illinois numbers, but by Cook County and Chicago.

So most of the contacts of the 60,000 or so come from Cook County, which is about 30,000.

So about half of our overall contacts come from Cook County.

That 30,000 number of contacts also includes the city of Chicago.

So if you notice on the chart, about 18 or 19,000 calls come from the city of Chicago.

That 30,000 that comes from Cook County includes that 18,000 from Chicago.

We can also break down our hotline data by zip code.

So for now, we only have data for Chicago, but we're looking to build that out.

We have a small and mighty data team as part of our policy advocacy and research team.

But hopefully, this gives a little bit of a snapshot of typically where calls are coming from in the city of Chicago.

Most often it is calls from the far south and near west sides of Chicago that we're seeing a higher frequency of calls at in comparison to the far north side as well as downtown.

As part of our hotline services, we've also expanded supportive services to supplement the hotline.

When someone is trying to leave an abusive household, there are two questions that really come to mind right away.

Where am I going and how am I getting there?

Given that our partner organizations within our membership are providing really great services like legal advocacy, counseling, crisis intervention, mental health.

We're striving to really bridge the gap to kind of meet those immediate needs before they can get connected to services through our different partners.

We're trying to make sure that those core needs of are met around transportation and housing.

So what we do is we provide hotel stays or safe rides through Uber Health or train tickets or plane tickets, even.

And we also provide cash through our survivor fund program.

It's the largest cash assistance program for survivors in the country, offering 1,000 one-time assistance for survivors.

But I also want to note that as much as these supportive programs have been incredibly helpful to try and bridge this gap, we're often limited based on kind of grant requirements for geographic restrictions, right?

So the city of Chicago has done a great job of funding the survivor fund, but that's only limited to City of Chicago residents.

There's some funding right attached in different ways.

So that makes it really imperative for us to be engaged in private fundraising and think broadly about where we can get funding from to really supplement, especially those high-risk cases that might not fit into kind of the grant limitations that we may have.

And overall, the top request that we receive at the hotline is request for emergency shelter.

About one third of all of our 60,000 contacts are requesting shelter as their primary need.

So to put this in a little bit of context, there's about 700 shelter beds across Illinois, not necessarily available.

That's the number of beds that are slated to help domestic violence survivors.

There's about 97 beds in Chicago.

There's 163 across all of Chicagoland.

So that's including Cook suburbs and collar counties.

And 444 beds across the 21 central and southern Illinois counties that have domestic violence shelters.

So our hotline staff checks in twice a day with every single shelter across the state to evaluate whether there are beds available.

And if you look at kind of the breakdown between the geographic areas, we found that for Cook County suburbs only.

So not including Chicago, just the suburbs in in Cook County itself.

There were 188 days in 2024 that there were no beds available.

So for more than half the year, survivors from the Cook County suburbs who want to remain in the suburbs will contact the hotline looking for beds.

And more than half the time, we don't have a bed available for them.

In Chicago, it's about one-third of the year that there's no availability.

So that's our hotline data.

That's often kind of the first point of contact for a lot of survivors, is reaching out to the hotline and getting connected to other service providers as well as some of our expanded supportive services around rides, transportation, and housing.

We also gather data from what's called Infonet, which is a system run by ICEJA.

And domestic violence and sexual assault service providers throughout the state enter data into that database.

What we found is that there were nearly 21,000 survivors served with domestic violence services here in Cook County.

That includes both adult and children.

The most common services provided are housing, like shelter or other housing programs like rapid rehousing.

Information, that is really an opportunity for a survivor to go to a DV service provider and try and understand what options or services are available to them.

And then the third most common is legal advocacy.

A reminder that community-based advocates, I know Amy Fox from LifeSpan presented on this to the task force earlier.

Those advocates can help survivors fill out paperwork, can support civil and criminal court needs, but I just want to note they're not legal professionals.

Attorneys are trained in a very different way.

But it's really important that these advocates are part of this process because they can help fill out OP paperwork.

They can help survivors navigate court.

They also have confidentiality protections under state law that we take really seriously.

So survivors are not harmed by any information being shared or subpoenaed as they seek help.

But like I said, they have different roles and trainings than attorneys.

I also include some of the demographic information that we can gather from Infonet to understand who is kind of the typical profile of someone who is seeking domestic violence services.

In Cook County, it is most often an adult woman who is most likely black or Latina, often with very limited income or no income, and using public benefits.

A reminder as we're thinking through the public benefits portion of this.

What we see sometimes in domestic violence, actually very often, is that abusive partners engage in what we call economic abuse, limiting the survivor's opportunity for work, income earning or schooling or education.

And this is a way to keep survivors as isolated and reliant on the abusive partner as possible.

That makes it incredibly hard for a survivor to leave to find their own housing, being able to pay for it.

So I just want to note that when we see these higher percentages for using public benefits and higher percentages for lower incomes.

This is a map again for the city of Chicago, but we're working to expand beyond that of the infonet data that is laid out by zip code for the city of Chicago in 2024.

So this is the number of domestic violence clients in Chicago in 2024 that were served by each zip code.

If you look at the map, the top zip codes are primarily again the south and west sides of the city, but a little bit of the northwest side as well, with Belmont Cranian and Hermosa.

So as we're kind of stepping back from some of the data and a little bit of the landscape of what survivors are looking for and what services survivors are getting.

As part of our work on the policy team here, we do a lot of budget advocacy to make sure that services are funded and that staff are adequately paid because this is incredibly important and undervalued work.

It's really important to remember that many of the folks that do this work are survivors themselves, even if they do not publicly disclose.

A bulk of the funding for these services, though, comes from government sources.

You can see here that the city of Chicago funded gender-based violence services.

So that includes domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking at 22.8 million for 2026.

This comes from three different revenue sources.

It is mostly the corporate fund, community development block grants, and it also comes from a 2% tax that we have in Chicago on Airbnbs and shared housing that goes directly to domestic violence services.

Some of this in previous years was covered by ARPA dollars, but not anymore.

The city filled that gap to keep services going, which is great.

Christina from the JAC is here today to talk more about Cook County funding.

But we wanted to include that here as well.

There's been about 4.6 million of county funds that have been reallocated ARPA dollars for 2026 that will be spent down by the end of the year.

And we're obviously in the middle of the state legislative session.

So this number is not necessarily final, but this is the number for the domestic violence services line item for the state of Illinois in FY25 at 72.6 million.

But again, I want to note that that is money that goes throughout the state, not just Chicago and Cook.

There's also a separate line item for sexual assault services, which is around 20 million.

But beyond local and state government funding, historically federal funding has been how many established domestic violence and gender-based violence programs have been funded.

We're seeing repeated losses and disruption at the federal level since January of 2025.

What we're most often, our most steady grants, our most consistent grants, have really quickly unraveled and have become unreliant.

For what dollars have been restored after kind of initial cuts, we're seeing some of that restored back.

But the difficulty is a lot of the funding has moved from community-based service providers to being housed within law enforcement programs and creating RFPs to build out more support for these services, but within law enforcement.

So as the task force continues, we wanted to share a few recommendations from all of us at the network and our partner organizations.

The first one being data, data, data, data.

Not only do we need better and more accessible data to really drive service decisions, for example, how can we make sure if there are a number of OPs filed at the Markham courthouse?

Do we have enough advocates to meet that need?

Or do we need to identify additional grant opportunities or funding opportunities to better meet that need?

We don't have data to better identify that that would help us target services in a way that is more deliberate and intentional.

We also would like data that we can use for private philanthropy purposes.

I'll get to that in a little more detail on the next slide.

We also want to encourage our government partners to think beyond the criminal legal system.

More than half of survivors will never contact law enforcement.

So if we're only focusing on funding and support for criminal legal system interventions and not community-based services and funding, we're really missing a lot of survivors in the community.

We're already seeing this in the county in some ways.

I've learned recently that connections for abused women and children or CAWC, who is one of our partner organizations, has a partnership with Stroger Hospital.

That's not necessarily something that's funded by the county, but what they do is they contact CAWC advocates to come to the hospital when a domestic violence survivor presents for medical care.

These are the places that survivors are showing up that we want to make sure that there's attention to, not just our court system.

We also recommend having a point person or an office as kind of the convener or thought leader on a gender-based violence system-wide response for Cook County.

I know that there's a lot of different elected offices and different systems that the county is responsible for.

It's probably difficult to have just one point person in that way.

But it would be really helpful, I think, for many of us who are steeped in this every day to identify who those key people are and making sure that there's information flow between them to better support a system-wide response, again, not only for our court system, but for health, for medical needs and all these places that survivors are showing up.

And then finally, we would love to see a dedicated funding stream for gender-based violence services in Cook County, just in the way that we do for the city of Chicago with the Airbnb tax.

Not necessarily that one specifically, but a dedicated funding stream that really protects that funding to make sure that it is safe for services.

I just want to know, you know, we we often get asked, you know, why aren't there advocates at this courthouse or why are there not enough legal aid attorneys?

What, you know, why are we not able to meet this need?

We see a lot of difficulty in getting funding to do this work.

There's a lot of limitations around geographics of where you know a survivor can be from in order to assist them.

We see limitations in what advocates are able to do.

For example, the federal government has really relied on legal advocacy as the primary tool.

But if a survivor is not interested in engaging in the court system, but they need other supports, there may be grant limitations in their ability to do that.

But in short, we often see, you know, people who really want to support victims of crime.

It's something that we hear a lot.

You know, people want to support survivors, people want to engage in this work.

Um, but when push comes to shove, we need to make sure that there's funding for services.

So it's great to identify efficiencies, it's great to identify opportunities to collaborate.

But the reality is we can't do a better job for the survivors in our community unless we have funding to be able to do those services and not have the buildup of wait lists or intakes closed that we're often seeing because of these limitations.

More specifically around data, though, um, on the left here is kind of a screenshot of data requests that the domestic violence committee that was led by the previous chief judge and the presiding judge back in 2022 created.

Um, some of these recommendations from 2022 have been implemented, like the after hours OP program, for example, but we haven't finished all of them.

So there still is a good amount of recommendations from that report that would be fruitful for the task force to take a look at.

Um, currently, our vice president of policy and impact, Maria Navron, is on the domestic violence county task force subcommittee that Chief Judge Beech has kind of convened as a follow-up to the 2022 recommendations.

And we know it's going to be a collaboration, right, between the Office of the Chief Judge and the clerk's office to make this data more available.

But what we're really looking for, right, is this order of protection aggregate data, Karina's Law Aggregate Data, which would be right a subset of order of protection data.

And this would enable us to better evaluate how implementation is going overall in Parina's law, but overall on our court system and operations and allow us to better target service needs or training needs and lend itself as well to identifying what these common outcomes are.

For example, if we have data that tracks whether a survivor has an advocate or an attorney assisting on their case and they're more likely to be granted an order of protection by a judge, that is something that we would like to be able to say in private grant applications because anecdotally we can say that, but we don't have data that consistently supports that anecdote.

And regarding our recommendation about a point person or a point office, I wanted to kind of name a list of all of the offices that domestic violence and gender-based violence has some component within their work.

Obviously, the JAC has taken a big lead on this with the grants administered to DB providers, which has been incredibly helpful because they are broad grants.

It allows our providers to be able to fill in different gaps across the county, particularly if they're limited from federal or state funding to do certain things.

The county has really created a great RFP to be able to fill in for things like safe exchange and visitation or crisis intervention or other things that are hard to get funding for because state and federal have just kind of consistently funded very specific programs and are not really willing to adapt.

The Office of the Chief Judge obviously is focused on court operations and the different divisions.

There's also a legal aid grant that lives within OCJ.

Obviously, we have our criminal legal system agencies, the sheriff's office, the state's attorney's office, the public defender's office, the clerk is you know, housing kind of the court filings and data connected to that.

We also have the office of the public guardian when there's kind of family law and minor children involved.

And obviously we have Cook County Health, which also has had some grants in recent years for behavioral health that also have supported partners of ours for counseling for domestic violence survivors.

So again, with kind of domestic violence living in all of these different places, having kind of a convening office or a point person within each of these agencies could really improve some information flow and develop a better strategy countywide.

So as a note, all of the data that I presented today from our hotline from the services report and much more is available online through this QR code.

You can access all of our measuring safety reports.

Um we have an Illinois General Assembly report that focuses on what survivor center bills passed in the last year.

So you can keep up with state legislation.

We also had a report on a pilot program through the regional transit authority that provided venture cards to survivors.

We have all the data on how that pilot program went.

We also have reports right on our survivor fund.

We will have new data being released about the hotline next week at noon through a virtual lunch and learn if anyone would like to join us there.

And then coming the summer, we annually have kind of virtual domestic violence 101 trainings for city and county electeds and staff.

It's really an opportunity to talk about what domestic violence is and what it isn't, really combat some of the stereotypes that you hear kind of in the public or in our culture, and also identify the different service providers that are within your districts because many of them are probably our partners.

So thank you again for all of your time.

Um and if you're interested in reaching out about anything, data and research, Karina's law, um, other state legislation, city or county budgets, please feel free to reach out anytime.

Um, our goal is really to convene and organize the services community here in Cook in Chicago.

Um, so if you have questions about who's in your district or where to connect, I'm happy to help facilitate that as well.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for that um presentation.

We're gonna take questions after each presentation.

So if you don't mind, we'll just does anyone have any any task force members have any questions?

Mr.

Stamps.

Thank you.

And uh sorry about this.

Um the first thing was what do a slides available through the QR code?

The slides aren't available through the QR code, but I think we can get them through the chair as part of the public meeting process.

Okay, thank you.

And what do you attribute?

There was a I didn't get the exact um number, but there was an increase that went from 17%, I think to like 76 or something like that.

And I wanted to know what did you um attribute an increase to?

What can we do to help get more data?

Like what is that process?

Is that seem like a rightful view for the numbers that we know exist?

Um, particularly, you know, since we're talking about county and county.

And then the third question I ask um, what would be the challenge?

What was the foreseeable challenge of having these programs folded into a law enforcement structure?

Okay, great.

I will try and take those one by one.

So the question about um the increase from 17% and 78%, I think that was on our slide versus city hotline data.

This grows across Chicago slide.

Yes, perfect.

Um, so if you look, this is our hotline data for the number of contacts or callers, text bears, or scatters um across uh Chicago area contacts.

So if you look by zip code, this is kind of how the map is laid out.

Chicago had a 17% increase in contacts to the hotline from 2023 to 2024, but overall, this is a 78% increase from 2019.

So the COVID pandemic really kind of, I think brought a lot of domestic violence out of the shadows.

I think people were more in recognition that this was happening, people were isolated at home.

And thus we saw many more callers than we did from pre-pandemic 2019.

Simultaneously, we've done a lot of work to make sure that more people are aware of the hotline.

So I think that there's kind of a two-fold thing.

It's not necessarily that this increase is stemming from a direct increase in domestic violence.

It's also coming from increased awareness that the hotline exists and there are supportive services available if people are trying to reach out.

Does that answer your first question?

Okay.

The second one was around housing, I think, with the emergency shelter question.

Um, shelter beds is always always incredibly difficult.

Like I said, we have hotline staff that are calling every single shelter across the state twice a day just to check in on the number of shelter beds.

So as calls are coming in, we can confidently say there's two beds available in Carbondale or there's two beds available in um Palatine or something, you know, depending on kind of shelter availability.

But I think what is the broader conversation that we need to have around housing for domestic violence is kind of a multi part problem.

We often use domestic violence shelter as kind of the baseline.

But really the issue is it's an emergency shelter.

It's intended as a way for someone to go in an emergency.

Um people are allowed to stay for you know 90 to 120 or so days, depending on kind of the shelter rules.

It's dependent on each shelter's kind of individual policy.

But the difficulty is people tend to stay for longer terms because we don't have other housing programs available and we have a crisis of affordable housing.

So what would be more helpful from a system-wide perspective is if we had a shelter program that was truly for emergencies only, that people are able to stay for a few days or a week or a month until they can land somewhere else.

If we had more funding for transitional housing and rapid rehousing programs to allow people to live, for example, rent-free for a year or two, or have rent partially covered by different funding sources.

That would enable more beds to open up in the shelter space that would allow more people to come in from emergency.

So we kind of have this filtering process of the shelter system, transitional and rapid rehousing, and then ideally affordable housing, affordable housing that's available so people don't have to stay in abusive household because they simply can't afford to pay rent somewhere else.

So it's kind of a multi-part problem.

Shelter, the transitional housing and rapid rehousing availability, trying to shift people from shelter to other programs to affordable housing and not keep people in this shelter system when it really should be for emergencies only.

Does that help answer a little bit?

Okay.

And then I think your third one is around the increase and kind of turn towards law enforcement programs.

That's certainly something we're seeing at the federal level with federal grants.

Um that's not necessarily our area of expertise.

We really do focus on city, county, and state, but it's a trend that we're noticing is more money is getting rescinded from community-based service programs that were previously funded by the federal government, and more and more programs are shifting towards domestic violence programs within law enforcement agencies.

There's kind of two issues here.

One, the majority of survivors will not go to law enforcement or domestic violence for sexual assault.

So if we're putting all of our government resources on a very specific system, we are missing the majority of survivors who want health and want support, but maybe do not want to engage with law enforcement.

So that's kind of the first problem.

The second is law enforcement has a different role.

Their job is to enforce the law and assist in investigations that lead to prosecutions.

Their role is not counseling, their role is not service provision.

They have a different role.

We have our role as community-based service providers to do the kind of work that survivors are looking for outside of some of these legal systems and support them if they choose to participate in the legal system.

But law enforcement also have other things that they have to attend to.

So we don't want to keep adding services to that work in a way that is either duplicative or difficult because it's outside of their role.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Commissioner McCaskill.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, thank you for answering those questions.

I had a couple of the same.

With regard to the suburban areas, we tend to lump them in.

Is there a way to actually quantify which suburban areas?

Because there is a lot of difference between disparity between the north suburban west and south.

Very concerned about the south suburban area because we do run out of beds, and as a result, we're sending people far north for shelter, which takes the children out of school.

So just wanting to know what is going on in the South Liverpool so that we can begin to have those conversations with our mayors to express just how important this is.

Yes.

Um, Commissioner McCaskill, are you looking specifically for um shelter bed information?

Well overall services.

Overall, well, both.

Um most important than our leak priority would be shelter bed services, um, actual shelter bed count.

And then with regards to resources and services, a lot of the testimonies that we heard over the last few months have been about the lack of services specifically marked in the courthouse, which is crazy.

Yes, absolutely.

No, I don't have that information offhand, but I can make sure to send it to your office.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

We if you could send it to all of us, that's something that the whole task force would.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Commissioner Naya.

Thank you.

Um for all of the valuable information and also for just the overall partnership that you have provided that how many.

Um I was intrigued by the funding um slide that you show the city, the county and um the state of Illinois funding.

Um, how does this compare to previous years pre-pandemic?

And you have a breakdown of what each level of government and their funding, what they're actually, what type of programmatic funding um it's going to.

Is it just legal support?

Is it how did that look within the ecosystem although everybody kind of pitching in to try to offset the decrease in federal funding for domestic violence?

Sure.

I can start with the city of Chicago.

I know there's folks from DFSS here who can also probably better articulate some of this.

But overall, the city of Chicago was primarily focused on funding the children's advocacy center before we got an influx of ARPA dollars.

That is when the city of Chicago really took kind of a bigger step into funding gender-based violence overall was when that initial bucket of ARPA money came around.

What's exciting, I think, about the city dollars is we no longer have ARPA dollars, but the city council did make a choice to continue funding that beyond ARPA.

So even though that there was kind of a big gap, I think about nine or 12 million, I can't remember off the top of my head, that was ARPA money for fiscal year 25.

They chose to fill that with corporate fund dollars.

Um so it's not something that the city was um engaged in as much until those ARPA dollars came through.

Previously, they were much more focused on the children's advocacy center funding as kind of a you know a city partnership, especially with Chicago Police Department doing child abuse investigations.

I know Annette is here as well and could talk about the Children's Advocacy Center.

Um for the county, we really saw more of an influx in gender-based violence services more specific to domestic violence services with the influx of ARPA dollars, right?

The county has been funding things like um there's a legal aid grant for the office of the chief judge that I think is about 150 to 200,000.

Um, but most of the county's investment has come from ARPA dollars that are running out at the end of the year.

Um, I know Christina is going to talk a little bit about the JAC funding, um, but overall, that's when kind of the uh where some of that funding for the county has come from.

The city and the county and the state all fund relatively similar things, but the primary focus of services is often funding for legal advocacy, counseling and mental health, crisis intervention and resource and information.

Um, but we're also seeing kind of especially the city take a more innovative approach in funding things like the survivor fund, which is a cash assistance program.

There's really not other cities in the country that are funding that kind of a program for survivors of gender-based violence.

Um there's also some funding for things like safe visitation or safe exchange.

So uh parent who is being abused by another parent can safely exchange or visit with their children without having to interact with their abusive partner.

So it's a way to kind of keep that survivor safe, but also make sure that they're complying with the parenting time and parentage findings from the Does that help answer your question?

We can give kind of more a breakdown.

Especially because we're talking about shelter, we're talking about some of these other you mentioned that being the number one potential um area that we need to focus on.

I was just trying to get a better understanding of you know the breakdown of where we're seeing the funding, like I know where the county's funding is going, but I don't necessarily know how does that compare to what the state is doing in the city and whether it's really complementing each other uh in a way in which we can help kind of leverage the different types of um funding that's out there, um, especially now that ARPA is going to be, you know, going away and there's a new push to ensure that we all kind of put our best put forward in being um good partners to you know uh continue the structure of supporting survivors and their children.

So just wanted that that is extremely helpful.

I can answer some of the housing related questions if that's helpful.

The city does fund a what we call the GVV hotel program.

The city also funds domestic violence shelters.

Um some of that funding right goes to programs like the hotline to be able to administer hotel stays for survivors who reach out if there's not a shelter bed available, if their situation is that, for example, they have maybe four children that they're trying to find beds for and shelter doesn't have five beds for the adult survivor and four minor children.

Um the hotel stay is an opportunity that might be available to them.

Um we also I think have JAC funding um for some hotels program as well.

Um, or at least we did in 2025.

I think there is a little bit in 2026.

Thank you.

Um so we do have funding for kind of shelter and hotels at the city and for hotels at the county.

Um we also have a rapid rehousing program with the city, which was expanded this year, which is really exciting because we're experiencing again with the federal funding changes that we're seeing and some of the changes from HUD and homelessness grants, um, the city is expanding um the rapid rehousing program in 2026.

So we should be able to serve more survivors, especially survivors that um we maybe weren't able to support with some of the changes at the federal level to keep that service going.

Um so remind me of you mentioned something about half of the survivors don't go to law enforcement, correct?

Yes.

So the need for having better kind of all-around holistic type of system for survivors is really needed.

One of I'm part of one of the working groups for this task force, and we our last conversation was regarding the funds and support systems that go into domestic violence court versus domestic relations.

So I feel like maybe the data that you just shared and information regarding half of them not going to law enforcement, not going through that may also kind of fall into maybe just going through the you know the domestic relations court and not necessarily domestic violence.

But there is a real difference in what we're seeing for support systems in court.

Like what do you say about that?

I know that we've had we had a very robust conversation in our working group regarding, you know, why there's potentially a difference there, but um the fact of the matter is that we still need that support system there.

So I'm not sure if you have any like thoughts on that.

Yeah, absolutely.

So it really is dependent, right, on what the um different grants say that legal advocates are allowed to be at.

Um, so that kind of determines right whether there is enough funding to support advocates at certain courthouses.

We don't have there's not a grant, for example, that specifically says you need to be in a certain courthouse.

What it is is kind of coordinate, the individual programs are determining where they can send advocates based on the funding that they have.

I'll note with kind of the domestic violence division versus the domestic relations division conversation and kind of the role that advocates can play.

Um advocates and attorneys are really terrific in their own right.

Um advocates can write help navigate the courtroom and kind of court system, they can help fill out the order of protection paperwork, um, but they are not legally trained in the way that an attorney is.

So having more attorneys available in domestic relations would be a huge asset because they are dealing with many more statutes and a complexity of cases, and especially cases that can take a very long time.

Um, not to say that an order of protection is not kind of a complex legal matter, but it is fundamentally different than someone who's navigating a family law system, parentage issues, custody issues.

Um that requires, in our opinion, kind of more of the assistance of an attorney, um, whether legal aid or private bar, um, than someone that an advocate is capable of.

It's just a different role.

Advocates provide great emotional support and kind of basic legal support in filling out the paperwork.

But when we're starting to get into the context of family law, it just becomes more complex.

And having an attorney being able to navigate that with them would be incredibly helpful.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Chuck.

Thank you.

Commissioner Dagman.

Thank you, Claire.

Thank you for all this information and wealth of knowledge.

I think it's um it's really helpful for us to inform what our mission is and how we'll execute that in the coming months and years.

So I do basic questions around funding and data.

So if a county, when um a group comes to us and asks a display funding for anything in particular, the county has to develop a process.

Sometimes we coordinate with a vendor on how that grant will be issued.

We do a pair of um program where we look at recipients and make everything fair and transparent.

So it's a it's a long process that is burned sometimes by a lot of bureaucracy at the end of the day, then there is award recipient or numerous recipients within kind of like the same bucket that are um determined and then we issue that grant funding, or we'll require us to spend money and then it's reinversable.

So for the federal funding that has been withdrawn for all these programs, how long do you think it would take if there was a new administration that was more passionate to BB type of issues to get federal funding back to the groups that historically was what?

I will say I I don't know if I comfortably have an estimate for that.

Um I will say that it's I think what we're seeing right now in the sector is people are much more wary to build out programs to be innovative to hire staff when our most reliable source of funding has become incredibly unstable.

Um it's difficult to say kind of what it would take to rebuild, because I also think that there's kind of this overall uneasiness at the moment of if we don't have reliable funds, we don't want to hire staff and then have to lay them off in six months or something due to kind of inconsistency.

So it's it's hard to have an estimate for that, but I just try and want to give a sense of what the sector is navigating right now.

Okay.

So I mean, just for planning out for county purposes and looking at the county board, we can advocate the state or the city, but we can't, you know, we don't have any as much voting opportunity there.

But it just seems to me that even if there's an election and we did know the administration and make a new administration and make promises, do certain things, it would still take a year probably to get funding into D services.

And so that looks to us, you know, like my question kind of really centers around how do we make a sustainable source of revenue predictable source of funding for DV services so that we can rely on it.

I know the county's never going to develop what the bugs do, but I think at this point we're trying to really be more insular in the way that we look at things, whether it is um funding for emergency management because we can't rely on the feds or SNAP benefit.

So now we have to give money in the greater Chicago repositories that people aren't starting.

You know, that is domestic violence.

So looking at that funding.

You know, if it's six months or a year or two years or five years or eight years, or what kind of predictable funding does DD need um that we can then look at sources of revenue that are predictable sources of our revenue that really just go into that bucket.

So it is a closed cycle because I think that's what the county just needs to do now is because the feds that's so unpredictable from why that we need to find you know sustainable sources of revenue or things that we care about, like DB, um, so that we can make sure that there is more stability within the services that you're talking about.

Um, and then if the Fed program give extra, that's great.

But like having that unpredictability for you and for violent survivors, just upend the whole system and that requires all of us to be working harder, and there are so many other things that also require attention.

So okay, the second thing is appendix C2 that you have listed on your slide, the list of data.

Okay, so who responds to this data request?

Is it like the circuit court?

And this is a for every county.

For every county in Illinois.

Like every county in the state of Illinois response to appendix C2.

We certainly are involved in conversations, I think, with not only the clerk's office about trying to access some of this data, particularly when kind of a there's a contract around implementation of some of this work.

Um, and we're trying to facilitate is there a way that we can keep this data sharing going beyond this implementation group.

Um, it's my understanding as well that some of this is also required to be approved by the office of the chief judge to be released.

Um it's a it's a dynamic we're also trying to figure out, I think is fair to say.

Okay.

I think if it further, we sent in the data request a number of weeks ago to the office, the chief judge who you know wants to approve it.

So that's our process here.

I'm probably gonna send it to the chief judge to make sure that they look at it first, they approve it.

It's usually kind of more formal, and then we'll send it to the court of the circle to send us actually a data request act this morning just now.

Um, but I think you know that's really helpful uh for now, but you know, as we move forward, those the data will change and we just need to make sure that is it an annual request so that we continue to have that data data annually, is it a you know biannual?

Can we also issue these data requests to Lake County or DPage County or E County, Lynn Bagel County, kind of also to see what it looks like regionally in Illinois rather than just here, because I think if we had standing data requests, yes, it takes some time to accommodate that in the upfront, but if we just expected that data annually on a January 1st or March 1st or the year prior, then we would get it and just have it.

And I think that makes it institutional easier and more predictable.

Yeah, but are you having problems getting this data here?

I am not sure what data was requested this morning.

For the this of C2, though, and C2C.

Oh, okay.

Um we do have difficulty in getting kind of the order protection aggregate data.

So for example, we know anecdotally that there's about a hundred to 120 orders of protection that are filed at 555 every day.

What we don't know is that for suburban courthouses, we don't know an annual total.

Is it for example, are more OPs filed in October versus July?

We we don't have that on kind of a more aggregate level.

So we have it anecdotally from talking with staff about kind of estimates, um, but we don't have this aggregate data in a way that um we've listed an appendix C2.

Okay.

Well, that's an in my so that was one thing I was gonna ask you.

Um, in in line with that, Commissioner Gigan.

So how can this task force help advocate for some of these issues that you've outlined, especially these data requests?

I think I think what would be helpful, like I had said with kind of a point person or a convener, um, really identifying who are the point people in these offices that can help release some of this data, um, create better systems.

Is it a technology technology issue?

Is it an input issue, for example, are we inputting all of this manually?

Can is there a way that we can develop it on a more automatic basis?

So when things are entered into court systems, it kind of goes into a data set.

Um that is the kind of information that I think just as commissioners being able to say that we think that this is a matter of importance for the community.

We think this is necessary for service provision and grants and using kind of your platform to do that would be incredibly helpful.

So I think that we've talked about this a little bit.

So we can make that incorporate that into one of the recommendations from the task force that hopefully we can work on in the next few months, but we'll continue on.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any additional questions.

Thank you for your presentation.

All right, before we move on, Katie, I just wanted to um invite our public speaker who is here, Sarah Brown, to take the mic.

And Amy, can you please time her speaking?

Yes.

Okay.

Hold on one second.

Okay, maybe again.

Thank you.

My name is Sarah Brown.

I am honored to speak before uh everyone today as a survivor of domestic violence.

Um, I stand here not just for myself, but for the countless women of color throughout our community who have similar struggles.

Living in the Southland region of Cook County, I experienced the profound impact of domestic violence, and it's why with the complexities of raising a child with my abuser.

This reality highlights a critical issue that must be urgently addressed.

Domestic violence is not discriminate.

It affects individuals across all demographics.

However, women of color often face unique barriers that make escaping these cycles of abuse significantly more challenging.

Many of us live in communities where resources and support systems are limited, cultural stigmas surrounding domestic violence can lead to silence and isolation, hindering our ability to seek help.

Moreover, the intersection of race, gender, and social and economic status.

And I want to add political disagreement can often result in systematic inequalities that further complicate our circumstances.

For the lack of time, um, I do want to just kind of appreciate the network.

Um I personally uh with my own experience, um, did not have um or was ever afforded the opportunity to work with any advocate group in a process of even reaching or contacting initial uh uh presentment of my order of protection request and Markle Courthouse.

Um so I do appreciate um, you know, just the conversation today.

So look at the numbers um and to see um, I mean, I'm grateful what Chicago and Cook County have uh did with uh bringing the task force together.

However, to see that it was only 4.2 million dollars, that the second largest county in the nation set aside.

And so if we look at the Southland and the network share their own numbers, they don't have any data for what they've done in the Southland yet, yet the syndicate that actually funds a lot of the smaller not-for-profit that are represented in the Southland community, but don't get nearly half of the funding.

And so then if we do that graph, it's literally a dollar and 92 cents per person.

I just use A.

I had to step down and get AI to help me out.

So that's a dollar and 92 cent per woman that is allocated from this budget that Click County had.

That is a slap in the face.

Thank you, Click County Commissioner, Don Miller, for everything and for the main thing of the commissioners here.

Thank you all for your commitment to making this task force happen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Okay, Katie, can you uh introduce our next presenter?

Absolutely.

Thank you, Sarah.

Um, our next presenter is Christina Kappa from the Justice Advisory Council under the leadership of President Park Funkal.

Okay, that's one of the things.

Good morning, everyone.

Um, as Katie mentioned, I'm Christina Copa, I'm the director of policy for the County Justice Advisory Council.

Um we're gonna try a clicker here and see what happens.

Um so the JAC is an office under Cook County Board President Tony Preckling.

We are a policy and grant making organization primarily, but we also do work in the re-entry and community engagement spaces.

Our mission on the slide there is to promote equitable, human-centered, community-driven justice system innovation and practice through rigorous stakeholder engagement, policy work, service coordination, and grant making that increases community safety and reduces reliance on incarceration.

It's amazing what you can fit into one sentence when you have so part of that work we really boil down into being evidence informed and community affirmed.

We want to make sure that everything that we're doing from our grant making to our policy work is really resting on the data and the research that does exist out there, supporting best practices, but also in ensuring we're hearing from community about what their needs are, because we know that's not always represented in those research reports or the data on its face.

So in 2022, the JAC started our first domestic violence funding portfolio through the American Rescue Plan Act funding and funding that was made available for this initiative.

That portfolio funding supports these areas that you see here counseling, legal support, advocacy support, and then housing support services for DV.

We arrived at those funding priorities through conversations with the service provider organizations, as well as conversations with our partners at DFSS and the state of Illinois to understand as they had already deployed a lot of their rescue plan act funding where gaps were still being seen in the system and where, given our relatively small footprint in the landscape, we could help fill some of those gaps.

And as Madeline mentioned, we have a little bit more flexibility, and we do that intentionally in how we design our funding opportunities to ensure that organizations are able to deploy that funding to meet the needs of their participants and their service providers as best fit and kind of in a more flexible way throughout the years.

So we started with $5 million in 2023.

And then in 2024, through Commissioner Anaya's advocacy and others, an additional 900,000 was allocated specifically for court based services.

So that's both the legal advocacy and the legal aid services on site at our courthouses here in Cook County.

So 2025, we also saw our first reallocation conversations around ARPA, and we were able to increase funding there in 2026 with that additional 4.6 million, first with 1.2, and then again with 3.3.

So we've seen a year over year increase in domestic violence supports and services and funding through the JAC.

Of course, we're going to need to plan for post-federal investment dollars on that front, but that's where we stand now.

So the way that breaks down is 7.7 million, 07 million, excuse me, uh fund in dollars that have been deployed from October of 2023 through today, and that will extend through September of 2026 when the ARPA funding is aimed to spend down.

We have until November, so we're really targeting September to make sure we don't have to give back any of those dollars.

And we have a couple months of extra room in case we need to move some things around.

So that those dollars are funding the organizations that you see there on the left in purple.

And those are everything except for those court-based legal services.

They might provide some of those services, but primarily those ARPA dollars are funding the housing, the counseling supports and the advocacy supports.

So that 900,000 was just one fiscal year of court-based services that we funded.

And we were able to do a couple of different things with that, but also to look a little bit more at how are we providing services for individuals that show up and are seeking orders of protection.

Are there different models we could try out?

And through Metropolitan Family Services leadership, there was a pilot that they ran, kind of testing different ways and points at which attorneys and legal advocates show up for folks in the courthouse so that we can hopefully make more informed decisions moving forward about how we can fund that better in the future.

Actually, can we go back?

It's probably the same, but the map's a little bigger on this slide.

Um so those are the headquarters of the organizations that we fund that you'll see on that map.

Um so we do have representation representation both in suburbs and the city of Chicago and the Southland and the North Side.

Um what that looks like when it comes down to the service footprint and where individuals that we are serving and reaching through this funding actually live and are coming from is in these two maps here.

Uh, we've reached about 5,500 folks through that ARPA funding, and that's as of February.

Our grantees report quarterly.

So that's the most recent reporting we have from them.

And then with the legal aid services in that one year, we reached just over 930 folks.

And it gets really interesting to note that looking at these graphs, there is the greatest area of service and perhaps need in the far south land here on this map.

But that is not where individuals are coming from when they're seeking court-based services.

That might not be fully representative of the of the environment and what's happening, given we don't fund every organization.

But what we did see in that one year was folks that are accessing those court-based legal services are coming from the far north suburbs, the northwest suburbs, and from the city.

And so there's likely a gap that we should be looking to fill and meet and learn more about what the barriers are for those individuals that are experiencing need on the far south side that aren't necessarily making it to court order protection.

And these were just some stats about uh where those those service needs are playing out, how folks are being referred, and where those providers are offering their services.

Um you'll note that the kind of the court advocacy and the legal assistance do come out as the one of the number one needs.

Um, the housing services, I think we we don't see as high of a need as might be reflected in so many of the other conversations that we have or the needs that come through on the hotline, just because of the way that we are funding those services through the county.

Um, it's primarily through wings and their shelter beds and then the hoteling service as well.

So it's not representative of the full shelter care system.

Um, but I think the like 1,828 and the 1,875 that you see between the two court advocacy and legal assistance columns are likely a lot of the same people that are getting kind of referred between different agencies or seeing the same services just at different points in their journey throughout the system.

So there's a little bit more here to do as well, and like trying to break down how many points of contact equal how many people.

And I think that's true across the board when we look at this type of data.

So, how are we going to move forward past 2026?

So we don't have additional funding opportunities coming up for announcement this year.

The JAC structures our grants as two-year cycles so that we can give organizations some of that predictability and stability in their own financial planning.

Um, so those agreements are coming to a close this year, and then we are currently planning for our FY27 budget request, which will inform any additional grant opportunities we put out.

So we're working with the network and other partners at the city and the state to kind of strengthen that coordination across sectors so that as we move into this post-ARPA world, we're able to leverage every public dollar to the best of its ability so that we're serving that vast landscape and making it reach as far as possible.

Um, and also that we're doing a better job from at least the county side in how we're defining the need so that we can better measure success and identify where our county dollars can be best leveraged in the future.

Um, I didn't include a slide with my contact information, but I'll add one of those uh so that in the public documents folks can know how to get a hold of the JAC.

But that's what we've got.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Any questions?

Commissioner McCasco.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, with regard to the um FY27 request that will be coming out, is it possible to have more of a purposeful conversation specifically targeting the South area?

So often we hear all of the testimonies from the uh survivors, and one consistent thing that has been going on since I came on the board is the lack of resources and services to provide um assistance to those survivors in the South suburban area.

So we continue to talk about it and we understand that it exists.

But one slide number five, when we showed the map, it was very clear that there's a consistent disparity between the service clusters there.

So it's not like we need to continue to fund more services north or in Chicago because clearly it already exists, but there is a very visible gap in the Southland.

So I'm not really understanding why we're having that conversation.

Like we know that it exists, we've seen it exist for years, yet we continue to say we're going to address it.

The question is when we had several people give testimony, survivors.

They've been asking for years, and some of them even indicated being out of millions of dollars because of where they have to travel to receive services.

So for years, so again, our effort and your effort, I would like to see be a lot more intentional in how services and funding is provided, because clearly you're not servicing the southern area at all by your own emission.

So very little bit, very little services.

So this map I will say shows where individuals are coming from to seek services.

We can provide another map that shows the actual dollar breakdown of where those are being allocated because while organizations' headquarters are all over Cook County for this grant, the highest concentration of dollars is actually in the Southland.

So the larger grant of always go there was made by Sarah Brown earlier.

So we know that the dollars are there, but the services to support the people in that area are not there because they're coming from other areas.

If I'm not, if I'm unless they work properly, so again, your intention needs to be a lot more purposeful in how those dollars are being expended.

That was the wrong question.

In an email or prior to even getting to the year.

That's usually my fault.

I'm sending it the night before as soon as I'm getting them, but I'll try and get them out as soon as we get them from the presenter.

So I apologize for that.

And then lastly, we um in the previous testimony in the previous presentation, the discussion was about um the lack of service, the lack of funding that will exist once ARPAR is completed.

Have we begun the discussions with the organizations regarding cross-utilization of services?

Because we are still giving them funding so that they can begin to start preparing now and they would know what that looks like.

So we're just being a lot more efficient and how we're providing services, not necessarily duplicating.

Yes, we've started conversations um with our counterparts and then also with the organizations that we currently fund to ensure that everyone's on the same page about where the funding starts and stops in the current existing streams and how we can better coordinate.

And so beyond that, are they working together?

So uh do they know how to network with each other?

So if stance doesn't have bids, she knows that this is the tree.

So this is how we start counting down where we send people if we don't have it to keep them as close to home as possible, but make sure there's not a gap in services.

I think that's a lot of the work that the network does through the hotline and figuring out what are the best close-to-home service provisions and providers that are out there to connect individual seeking services.

And then our uh grant making dollars will always be competitively bid.

So there is like an element of uh restriction there in terms of how much we're able to prescribe specific things.

Um but we always want to make sure that we're covering as much as possible.

And lastly, um, with regard to uh KC specifically, we've had testimony um where individuals would make the comment that they are the same organizations are receiving the dollars every year.

We're just giving it to them constantly, and we're even increasing.

However, we had no data to demonstrate or measure how successful those programs are.

We've been asking for that probably since August when we first started the domestic violence um questions, and I don't know if somebody else received it, but I've not.

Um so if that exists, um, because we asked for it, they said it existed, but it just wasn't here at the time of the presentation.

Um, so we're definitely like to see which organizations are actually performing well and which are not.

So we'll know whether or not we need to continue funding them because if they're not providing the services and you're talking about two hours per person, we need to know.

And that that data still has not been given to me.

Maybe one of the other commissioners has it.

If you could share it, no, we don't have it.

Yeah, so we've been asking um quite some time.

So we need JC to actually be committed to getting us some real information, even with how you're handling your workshops, how many people are actually attending?

Do the organizations actually understand what you're asking them for?

Um, just basic data about the current.

Yeah, certainly.

I don't know that we've received like a formal data request.

So happy to pull what our um grantee metrics are.

We have pretty rigorous grant compliance and financial compliance um reporting that happens and monitoring that happens for all of our grantees.

That will always speak to the utilization of the dollars and not necessarily be a full program evaluation.

Um so I think that's something we could probably explore on a more broad level.

I think the financial part is the issue.

Um, it's more so your people part.

Are you servicing the people?

You know, you're spending the money.

Clearly, we're giving more money.

You know, it's being spent, but are you actually servicing the people?

How many people, how many of these shelters are actually housing women?

What's the length of spend?

How you know?

So we really need to know being more data informed, at least from the electedly more data informed.

So we'll know whether or not certain organizations should continue receiving dollars.

Thank you.

And these are requests that I think we can formulate and put together as a result of having this information at the end of the task force that these are things moving forward that we'd like to continue to have ongoing data on.

So um, I it yeah, so a formal request can be made.

And I know in the past, just JAC in general, we've talked about all the different programmings that JAC gave us updates on as to where the money was spent, how it was spent, where.

So this is just another line item that we can definitely look into.

So thank you.

Commissioner Anaya.

Thank you, Christina.

Um, so just a quick question.

Um we uh funding, right?

We keep talking about ARPA, we keep talking about that.

You just highlighted an important um timeline for the county, meaning we're kind of ending the cycle regarding this um the particular um DV a grant.

Um so prior to 2023, we did not have an earmark um under the JC and the grant funding.

It was mostly violence prevention, but it was street violence, gang violence, which is very needed, the support we have seen over the past few years, um, how much it has helped in funding prevention in in ensuring that we're doing that work.

Obviously, we have had great collaborate collaboration with the city and state on that effort.

Um, I'm worried about us moving past ARPA and not continuing to earmark for DV and SA.

Um, I think it's it's crucial that we look at this uh form of funding um uh in the long run.

Um, so I just want to be reassured that we're looking at it that way.

Um, I would hate it to be bundled up again um with just the general violence prevention grants.

Um, I remember, you know, I've been at the county, I'm about to turn 15 years in different capacities, but I remember um when we used to um kind of review some of the JC applications, and oftentimes when I brought up, you know, domestic violence or any of those efforts.

If it I mean, when you're facing when you're comparing domestic violence to people being killed out in the streets, it's really hard for people to conceptualize the importance of one over the other because they're different um uh types of violence.

And uh it doesn't really um you shouldn't be comparing, you know, violence is violence, and at the end of the day, ensuring that the safeguards here in the county, given the fact that we do have public health and public safety as part of our main missions within our fiduciary duty, um, it's really important for us to ensure that we um have a collective stance and ensuring that we're funding it beyond ARPA.

So I would hate for us to kind of take a step back and again bundle it up with all other um violence.

So um, what are the conversations and are you hopeful that that's going to happen?

And um out of the pie of violence prevention, do we foresee that we're gonna keep about the same percentage continuously for DV and SA?

Yeah, I can't speak to percentages.

We're currently like in the process of planning for our FY27 Ask and our grant dollars come from the same pool of funding as all public safety dollars.

So certainly would lean on the board of commissioners for their advocacy and ensuring that that piece is available for community-based services as part of that broader public safety plan in Cook County.

Um, you know, we'll we'll keep fighting for as many grant dollars as we can give and responsibly administer.

Um, but I think at the end of the day, that comes down to kind of the finite county resource and how we decide to allocate those dollars together.

And then the network presented having a designated funding stream for specifically domestic violence.

Do you see that as something that commissioners should continue to and then what is the role of the JC within that process?

Yeah, happy to meet and collaborate and think through how we want to earmark specific funding or what needs um you all are hearing that we want to make sure we continue to advocate for as we form our budget and make that request of uh DBMS.

But I think one of the areas, while a separate stream of funding would certainly be ideal, one of the other things that we're exploring to make sure that we have flexibility is the ways that, for example, our survivors of gun violence um grant or our violence prevention grants more broadly can be more inclusive of DV and use language that is specific to supporting the needs of domestic violence so that that funding also becomes available to some extent to those folks so that um as we're kind of navigating braiding funding streams, that can also be an option.

Perfect.

And then my last question is in regards to all of what the um Commissioner McCaskill just mentioned.

So for a few years we've talked about you know partnering up with academia to ensure that we are highlighting the impact of our dollars.

Um is DV a part of that conversation?

And are we ensuring that we're also evaluating our dollars wisely there?

Is that a recommendation that this body should be?

Okay.

Okay.

I'm just shaking my head yesterday.

Yeah, we currently don't have any academic partners at the JC on the domestic violence front.

We've been um partnering with a lot of organizations around the implementation of Karina's law and kind of focusing uh our contractual services there in the past year, and then also on this pilot on the legal aid services side to try to understand from providers what they're seeing.

Um, but I think that is an area that we uh we appreciate having partnerships in our violence prevention space and our CDI space specifically.

Um of course we have the benefit of the city and the state helping contribute to some of those evaluations on that front.

Um, and so I think that'll be a continued area that we welcome recommendations and partnership on.

Correct.

Thank you.

Thanks, Chad.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you so much for the update.

Appreciate it.

Next, Katie, like to introduce the next presenter.

Um, our next presenter is Jennifer Wells from the Illinois College Against Domestic Violence.

Uh, Jennifer will be familiar, Facebook, many people here.

Um she is now the director of policy at this organization.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for having me today.

Um, I'm very grateful for the time to talk about.

I'm gonna go slightly bigger picture and talk about some of the statewide response to domestic violence.

I'm the chief of policy for the Illinois Coalition against domestic violence.

We are the federally designated statewide coalition of domestic violence providers.

And you can see from this map, um, this map is designed to help you understand the way that our member programs cover the state.

There are 53 member programs, and um the color coding here shows you their sort of catchment areas of where they are serving people.

So it does include um all of Cook County, including the city and Southland.

Our members cover that.

Um, we are, in addition to being the coalition of member programs, we are also a funder and we help redistribute federal funding of about 10 million dollars every year, mostly through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.

And those funds are used to provide a wide range of services, many of which you've already discussed today.

And that's one thing because I have the privilege of building on what my colleagues have already said.

I'll I'll probably be a little bit shorter.

Um, and so much of what I have to share is just an endorsement of what they have already shared with you.

So um one of the other big pieces, especially of my role, but of our agency, is that um the coalition is the is involved in statewide policy efforts to improve funding and laws and services for domestic violence survivors.

And we're also working very hard to protect domestic violence services, especially as my colleagues have indicated in an uncertain federal funding arena, the role of protecting services and funding has increased.

Um go to the next slide.

I wanted to um show the full list of our domestic violence service members.

This is just another visualization of the color code that you saw previously, um, to show that we sort of group our members in Cook County in North and then in Central and South.

Um, like the network, we don't provide direct services.

We are helping our member programs provide the critical services that you are all so um in favor of and so advocating for.

I want to um talk a little bit about why the whole map is so important to Cook County.

When Madeline mentioned that it is often the case that all of the beds in Chicagoland are full, what you probably realize is that results in survivors going far out of their home area.

So our members regularly report serving survivors from Chicago or Southern Cook County in as far as Quincy, Bloomington, um, Springfield, and that provides an extra challenge for survivors because when they have to travel out of their home environment, um, it can be disruptive to their families.

It can also be difficult to get back to Cook County for court appearances and other things like that.

So it is a challenge, and I wanted you to realize that Cook County residents are often in a lot of these other jurisdictions for services.

We know that our member programs are working very hard to coordinate their funding from across all of their government services.

I was just talking to a colleague who was like, okay, so I'm using my AG funding, attorney general's office funding to leverage with my city funding so that they use it for matches and leveraging and stuff like that.

So it's really our member programs are putting together this complex mosaic of support to serve the clients.

You can go.

Okay, so I think you've heard a little bit of these numbers, but I want to just maybe make a couple of additional points.

So what we see in the state of Illinois is an increase year over year of domestic violence homicides.

And my colleagues have already talked about many of those reasons because we think the COVID pandemic sort of surfaced uh a larger domestic violence challenge.

Um, but I also I'm glad that you all acknowledge that there has been a serious investment in decreasing street violence and community violence.

And I think that domestic violence would benefit from a similar investment, and then we could see the same success in decreasing the number of domestic violence homicides.

And as my colleague already mentioned, domestic violence survivors are needing to stay in shelter longer and longer because of the lack of affordable housing or the lack of transitional housing or the lack of um supportive housing that they can go to.

So we saw the average stay in a domestic violence shelter increase seven days in the last year.

And that was also building on an increase from the previous year.

Um, so we are we are definitely facing some challenges statewide in domestic violence services.

So I know you've already learned that most domestic violence orders of protection are brought by pro se litigants, that is a survivor without an advocate or an attorney.

And as I speak with member programs across the state, I hear similar concerns all the time.

And again, so much of this is an echo of the previous previous recommendations.

Education of court personnel is one thing that I don't think I've heard yet today.

And it's honestly one of our number one requests.

What our survivors are experiencing is the number of judges and guardian items, GALs, and other court personnel that don't believe domestic violence victims, that don't understand the dynamics of domestic violence, that don't know the current laws.

Um it's a real challenge for all of those survivors who are forced into court without representation.

And then building on that, um, building on that challenge, we definitely need more legal representation for domestic violence survivors, knowing that so many survivors are going to domestic relations courts and their cases can drag on for years, and they need legal representation to help them navigate the very complex problems that they're facing.

Um, the members that the survivors that our members work with often tell us that their survivors cannot get to court quickly because they need barriers to getting into the courthouse, whether it's transportation, whether it's the survivor was hospitalized, the survivor can't get child care, the survivor can't get off of work.

It often takes some time for the survivor to get into court.

And then when they get into court, the judges say, well, this isn't an emergency anymore.

I'm not giving you an order of protection.

So it goes to both the accessibility and uh ways to help survivors get to court and the judicial education that we are recommending.

And then once survivors have orders of protection, we're hearing that they face challenges getting extensions of orders of protection.

We have absolutely heard judges tell survivors, well, if nothing's happened for two years, why would you need an extension of the order of protection?

Um right.

So like it is it is a little counterintuitive that if the system works, people think you don't need the system anymore.

So it's it's a big challenge.

Um the last piece that I'll talk about is the need for increased attention to economic justice and security.

Of course, this goes to the housing issue that has already been mentioned, but also understand that Illinois has put into place very helpful laws to try and protect survivors, things like the Victim Economic Safety and Security Act or VESA.

We have a brand new law about coerced debt to help survivors sort of regain their financial footing and repair their finances after an abuser has used economic abuse.

And those laws need more education so that they can be fully implemented.

Um I just had to take the opportunity to tell you all about a law that the coalition is trying to pass right now to address some of the biggest challenges that we've heard about.

And this is really the whole purpose of the coalition.

We gather information from our 53 member programs, and then we try to sort of chip away at the barriers that survivors are facing.

So we are trying to pass a law to increase access to remote hearings, especially in this environment with ice at courthouses.

Remote hearings is a big help to survivors, plus all of the barriers that I mentioned, like survivor being hospitalized, survivor can't get child care, all of those things.

We are also focused on protecting victims from harassment and surveillance by all of the forms of technology.

Um I thought about putting in front of you the approximately 100 ways that we had heard about domestic violence victims being harmed and harassed, everything from being followed by their own home security system at the abusers, you know, who still had access to the system.

Um, there's just so many ways that abusers are using technology to arm and hurt, and we wanted to pass a new law that defined all of those technology uses as harassment because they're so harmful.

And then last, we're trying to clarify how and when survivors can obtain an extension of an order protection, trying to work against that bias that was stopping them from getting the care just when they needed it most.

So, like I promised a quick overview because so much of it was a rerun of my fantastic colleagues and all of their points.

Um, and I'm glad that you have um dedicated so much time and energy to this issue.

I'm very grateful for it.

I've been working in gender-based violence for decades, and I'm so grateful of the attention you're paying to the issue.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um we've I had a question before we uh have so for this House bill, and so where is it in the process?

Um, it has passed the out of committee in both House and the Senate.

And so now it's moving through both processes for um like final reading.

Thank you.

That's good.

So is there any way this uh task force can help you in any way with that?

I would very much appreciate um y'all uh supporting it with your colleague lawmakers, but also there will be an opportunity for witness slips in favor of the law shortly when it's up for hearing.

Can you share that with us?

We'll do.

Okay, and thank you.

So the other thing I was going to ask about the um the second part surveillance with technology with social media included in that.

Yes, it was it was okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, so any other questions from anybody.

Commissioner Naya.

Sorry, can you repeat where we're at with this bill?

This bill has passed out of committee in both the House and the Senate.

So it's in it's in first and second reading, depending on which chamber it's in.

I make sure.

Yep, yeah.

Thank you.

Well, I know I'll say that maybe some of us want to go when it comes if that would help.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I know that you work closely with your state counterparts, so you can tell them how crucial this bill is to just giving a little bit more protection to the survivors that you're so invested in helping.

Do you know?

I I know we can look it up, but who's the chief sponsor of the chief sponsor in the Senate is Adrian Johnson?

Okay, and chief sponsor in the House is Representative West.

Great, thank you.

And it passed through the um the judiciary in the Senate and the criminal committee in the House.

Great.

Thank you.

But I do appreciate how you touch on the educational piece about personnel.

Because I think the moment as a survivor, I think the moment that we walk into paperwork, I think they need to be educated.

As well as the like I have report of protection when we're going to walk in.

It's pretty much fine.

So thanks, they should be very important to give us a absolute.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So now I just wanted to open up the meeting to see.

Did we have any other in general questions or right?

Yes, Commissioner Stamps.

Thank you, Chair.

And um thank you to all of the presenters that just had such a wealth of information and advocacy on this critical issue.

But I am still and have brought this up before.

That's reflected in the expertise of these matters.

Um since we know that the women who are primarily impacted of black and brown, I just am real, I think it's really really important that that diversity is shown when we're presenting when we're presenting.

So I just want to flag that again.

And I know that when I did it a couple of months back, I even you know offered up if there's opportunities or the need to get other um women who who study who are professionals who are more excellent organizations, then we should do that.

But it's we have to be represented in this in this discussion.

We cannot just be the topic, the subject matter, and not have representation about the people that are most impacted as the um subject matter experts as well.

Thank you for that.

I always say I believe in like the field of dreams philosophy.

If you build it, they will come.

So let's build it and have them come.

So I think these organizations um are the ones that we have currently in the mix, and they're the that's why they're the ones presenting the information.

But we do need a diverse pipeline, and that could be something again that comes out of the task force that we want to make as a recommendation.

Um other new business that anyone would like to bring up.

Yes.

Can you remind us on the timeline of when we're hoping to circle island or so?

We want to have information that we can present by July.

Thank you.

Yes.

What's your name?

Thank you.

Um asking the question um in part.

Yeah, you need to go to the mic, sorry.

And state your name again, please.

Okay.

No.

My name is Dr.

Steve.

I work for the Power Department of Finance.

And um, my question is uh do you have any information on any resource centers where we can make donations to domestic violence shelters?

I have a lot of uh partners that I work with um in my personal business that uh advocate for supporting survivors, and a lot of times since shelters are oftentimes not public, according as they should have um you don't know where to donate um things like clothing um for the grace driver things of that nature that survivors maybe.

Um I'm looking for uh information.

Do you want to answer?

Sure.

Thank you.

Hi Denise, it's nice to see you again.

Um you know, we'll we'll I'll follow up with you um and just kind of see what where, like if there's a geographic or something specifically um you're looking to donate, but um and uh the network and then the coalition chair, we have this amazing list of of organizations that I'm sure would love your donations and support.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you.

As we were talking about advocacy and what we can actually do as a task force, I'd love to put that out there as an agenda item for next time that if we wanted to send in witness slips, that's an opportunity to be advocates to promote our advocacy, and then also um compiling the list of um resources that are available geographically that we'll be getting from the different organizations so that we can see that in one big comprehensive view.

So uh I will just add that as maybe new business items for us to take up.

So if there's nothing else, then thank you all for being here and hearing no further discussion.

I'd like to adjourn this meeting.

All of those things now, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all for being here.