Safe Homes Project
The Safe Homes project has been at the forefront of the development of domestic violence services for more than 30 years. Together with a handful of sister organizations across the country, SHP defined the issues and created responses that are now utilized by many other domestic violence and non-domestic violence specific organizations when assessing and responding to survivors.
SHP has always been a leader in the field of domestic violence
HISTORY OF THE SAFE HOMES PROJECT
The Safe Homes Project (SHP) was started in 1976 by Good Shepherd Services, with support from a network of community activists, as a small community-based program helping battered women and their children. First called the Park Slope Safe Homes Project, it focused on providing a hotline, counseling, and advocacy to women who were being abused in their homes. In those days there were few shelters, few laws, and few services. Park Slope Safe Homes was the first program in New York State to provide volunteer host homes for battered women and their children to stay in while looking for a safer place to live.
In 2006, on its 30th anniversary, Park Slope Safe Homes Project was re-named the Safe Homes Project to reflect the fact that our services now reached far beyond our original neighborhood. Today the Safe Homes Project continues to provide a hotline, counseling, safety-planning and advocacy for survivors of domestic violence, as we have from the beginning. We also run a 20-bed shelter, provide education and training about domestic and intimate partner violence to professional and community groups throughout New York, work to improve laws and policies affecting survivors, and provide targeted services for special populations, including Spanish-speakers, youth, and LGBTQ survivors of partner violence.
Numbers and Statistics
The FBI reports that approximately 1,500 women are killed each year in the United States by husbands or boyfriends.
