Funding for crime victims getting scarce

Chelsea L. McGowan

cmcgowan@weatherforddemocrat.com

As the national economy continues to suffer, some organizations dependent on federal funding are starting to feel the pinch.

Catherine Tietjen, executive director of Freedom House, expressed her concern about what the future holds for agencies that assist victims of violent crime.

“There’s less and less funding available from the federal government,” she said. “We didn’t lose anything this year, but the chances are very high that we’ll be without a significant grant next year, and that’s just because the funds are running out.”

The grant Tietjen referred to is available through Victims of Crimes Act (VOCA), and assists with shelters, counseling and victim assistance.

According to published reports, Cross Timbers Family Services, a Stephenville agency, recently learned they were losing more than $77,000 in VOCA funding, and the Johnson County Crisis Center lost $160,000.

“I don’t even want to brag that we got our funding from VOCA this year because so many other great organizations lost it through no fault of their own,” said Tietjen. “Cleburne’s review scores were very good. They should have been funded, but the money just ran out.”

Tietjen said the VOCA grant Freedom House receives exceeds $150,000, an amount she called “significant.”

“That grant is a significant piece of our funding,” she said. “We don’t have the local resources from larger foundations, so we rely on these grants to provide basic, non-fringe services to our county.”

Although many area organizations are trimming back services to account for decreased federal funding, Tietjen said Freedom House doesn’t have anything to trim.

“We operate a lot of services with a very small staff,” she said. “We’re very lean, and there aren’t many things we can cut ... in fact, no, there’s no place to cut. It’s imperative that we get the funds we need.”

According to Tietjen, the process allocating funds through VOCA has recently changed and will soon affect all area victim assistance programs.

“They went to a three-year funding cycle, and we’ll have to reapply next year,” she said. “When we reapply, we’ll be competing for our grant money against much larger entities like Dallas and Tarrant County. We all serve different populations with the same high quality of services. But now they’ve made us compete with each other, even though we serve different regions of people.”

Although Freedom House certainly hopes next year’s funding will remain intact, Tietjen said plans are already underway to host a fundraiser should the VOCA grant be lost.

“I’m going to write the best grant I can possibly write and be begging for more funds elsewhere to replace that amount if we don’t get it,” she said. “Our costs go up every year, and our financial records are impeccable, but we can only write grants for a certain amount. We’ll have to have a fundraiser, probably. We’re talking about half our funding. We need to prepare so that we don’t end up in the same position as Cleburne and Stephenville next year.”

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