Personal Privacy Shelter

personal privacy shelter
Does anyone have any experience with domestic abuse shelters?

I was wondering what they are like, what they do to help, and if there is a long wait to get into one. Also, how much privacy do you have and how comfortable/homey is it. Also, I would like to hear personal experiences, good or bad.

I worked for a Domestic Violence Shelter for years and to be honest, regardless of how comfortable or homey it is, if you need to go there, go as fast as you can before it gets worse. Okay, that being said. At the shelter where I worked, when a woman/family first came in, we tried to give them their own room but sadly, it wasn’t always possible and sometimes they would have to share with someone. In the entire time I was there, we never had a “waiting list” because if a woman needed help, we would somehow make room. It’s THAT important. Each shelter has what’s called “Advocates”. These are women that are trained to deal, physically, psychologically, etc and they are true angels and care so much. The privacy is not exactly the best but the shelters try to make it as much home as they can. We even had a little library room they could go into and relax, read, listen to music, just get away. The women at our shelter took turns cooking but I don’t know if it’s like that at many others. Most seemed to enjoy it because it brought all the families together and really helped a lot with stress. We also had what we called extended homes. Once a woman/family had been in the shelter for a while and was able to go thru her counseling sessions, get a job, (stay away from her abuser), they were allowed to move into little apartments that we had that connected to the shelter. Once there, they had to maintain a job, put back a specific amount of money each week, do their own cooking, cleaning, just like they would in a regular apartment but with no rent, etc. From there, the shelter would help find them an apartment, even a car sometimes if need be but if a woman is serious about getting away from the abuser, they are serious about helping. No, it’s not always a basket of roses there but in the end, you WILL still be alive and so will your children. (We did have many without children, too!) I hope this helped a little and again, I hope, if this question is for you, that you get help as soon as you can. God bless you..

Also, at our shelter, it was surrounded by a chain link fence with electric guard/coils. You had to have a code to get in and only the police could bring a person in. When they called the DV 800#, after speaking with them, they would go to the police station where an office would be waiting to bring them to us. We had alerts around our grounds to where if a car ever pulled up too close to the gate, it would alert us and we could take necessary measures. We did everything we could to keep our ladies safe. I finally left because one of the ladies I came to call a friend…went back…he killed her 2 days later.

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