Steubenville Woman’s Club gets update on Refuge for Women

STEUBENVILLE -- Members of the OFWC/GFWC Woman's Club of Steubenville will focus their attention on scholarship recipients and animals during the noon luncheon and business meeting set for Monday at Froehlich's Classic Corner in Steubenville.

President Carlotta Jordan will preside at the meeting where scholarship presentations will be made to a student from Steubenville High School and Catholic Central High School by Margaret Brown, scholarship chair.

The program presenter will be Brian Young, Jefferson County humane officer. Members are reminded that donations of dog and cat food are welcomed.

The club's April 4 meeting involved a program update on Refuge for Women Pittsburgh by its executive director, Theresa Golden, who had spoken to the club in recent years when the local nonprofit was Refuge for Women Ohio Valley.

According to flier that Golden made available, Refuge for Women is "the nation's largest nonprofit, faith-based organization that provides a continuum of care for women, age 18 and older, who have escaped human trafficking or sexual exploitation. With multiple locations across the United States, Refuge for Women offers up to two years of safe housing, at no charge to the resident, with 24-hour-a-day staffing. The program is designed with evidence-based curriculum, and staff is trained to help residents recognize their goals in life, assist them in reaching those goals and facilitate healing."

Golden told the women's club members that there have been a lot of changes during the past two years, part of which were attributed to the pandemic.

"We had the house here in Jefferson County -- that was a long-term program, which is what Refuge has done for the last 10 years is long-term housing for women who have been sexually trafficked or exploited, and during that time, COVID gave us an opportunity to evaluate our program and look and see what the need is and how to best serve the women who come into our homes," Golden said.

Out of that re-evaluation came a switch from just doing one year of long-term housing. "We now have two years of continuum care housing for women, and that starts out with emergency housing, so emergency housing is actually what we are doing now," Golden noted. "During that time of COVID as the women graduated from our program, we did not take additional women in to the long-term (program) in Jefferson County because we wanted to do a relaunch from the long-term housing to the short-term emergency housing."

The emergency housing is more of "a short-term crisis stabilization so they're only there up to 90 days. The first emergency home we started in our program was in Kentucky with an average stay of about 30-45 days to get stabilized from being on the streets or in a situation to evaluate where to go next," she said.

"We shut down the Jefferson County house and really evaluated how to better serve emergency services," she said of the decision to have a location instead in the Pittsburgh area "but still very much serving the Tri-State Area. It's actually better for women in Jefferson County to move to Pittsburgh to get them out of their environment where triggers might happen."

Money fron the sale of the local home went toward a downpayment on a larger one in Pittsburgh "where we have started over last year, getting that ramped up and ready to go."

Instead of serving six women in the long-term, it can serve 10-12 in a short term program, helping victims from the streets immediately and "wrapping services around them from day 1."

While the emergency housing program provides temporary shelter and access to services, the long-term program is where "the real work of healing from trauma begins."

It involves working to achieve a "healthy, well-grounded life," and setting personal goals and seeking employment, including with Refuge for Women's own Survivor Made social enterprise making candles nad leather products.

The third element is transitional living offered to women who have graduated from the Refuge for Women program. "Residents are offered a safe place to live, continued support and accountability, as well as individual counseling and additional life skills."

"Eventually our 2025 goal is to have all three types of homes in this area -- emergency, long term and transitional living, which also came out of that COVID period when we were working with our residents and seeing they needed extra help after 12 months in our program so with transitional living it is more like what you consider a halfway house," Golden explained. "They move out of long term to this where they are going to school, working or whatever their vision for their future is but still have the accountability of someone at the home, making sure they're going to therapy and meetings. That's another year of free housing they get from this program."

For information on Refuge for Women, contact Golden at theresa.golden@refugeforwomen.org or call (740) 792-4374. The website is www.RefugeForWomen.org.

The flier noted the United States is the largest consumer of trafficked people. "Human trafficking is a dark industry tghat abuses and exploits women of all ages. When a woman is rescued from a trafficker, she is faced with a lifelong journey of healing from her past trauma and oftentimes substance abuse issues."