Community-Based Services

For survivors, the consequences of being partnered with someone who is abusive last well past when a survivor is able to gain independence from that abusive partner. Survivors experience not only emotional and personal hardship but a host of logistical challenges that can disrupt the healing process and hinder survivors’ efforts to get their lives back on track. Through STEPS to End Family Violence programs for survivors and their families, we offer a wide range of clinical supports to help survivors overcome their past trauma and find paths toward healthy, independent lives.

Healing is the most vital step for someone who has survived intimate partner violence. We provide individual and group therapy that help survivors and their children move beyond their histories of abuse to see hope for the future. Recognizing the strain that intimate partner violence can have on families and on survivors’ ability to parent, we employ a number of evidence-based models to help parents and children bond, endure, move forward, and form strong, resilient families. In addition to Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, we are strongly committed to the Child-Parent Psychotherapy model to heal and strengthen attachment between survivors and very young children. We also offer highly effective, evidence-based parenting support through our facilitation of Parenting Journey and Parenting in America, through which parents explore how their past experiences impact their parenting and re-envision how to lead their families.

Beyond therapeutic supports, we offer expansive case management and advocacy to meet the complex needs of survivors and their families. As families engage in the healing process, we help alleviate additional concerns by providing assistance and guidance in housing, public assistance, education, and more. Recognizing the particular vulnerability of survivors and their families to economic insecurity, as well as the financial barriers to gaining independence from an abusive partner, our Economic Empowerment Program provides financial counseling and advocacy for survivors.

Criminalized Survivors Program

Continuing the tradition that first led to the foundation of STEPS to End Family Violence in 1986 at the Bedford Hills Women’s Correction Facility, we remain highly committed to raising awareness of the direct link between intimate partner violence and criminalization by providing direct support to survivors who have been arrested for their efforts to survive and/or resist their abusive partner’s behavior. This includes support for survivors who have been arrested for violence against their abusive partner as well as those who have been coerced into illegal activity by an abusive partner. Beyond our therapeutic supports and case management offered to all survivors, we provide legal advocacy and court accompaniment to survivors who are detained at Rikers Island, as well as those in the community facing court involvement. We work directly with defense teams to develop trauma narratives that demonstrate how intimate partner violence brought survivors to the place that preceded their arrest.

We also work to raise awareness of the role intimate partner violence often plays criminalization by partnering with New York City courts, legal professionals, and peer organizations. We provide expert-led trainings to various actors in the legal system to help them identify and support criminalized survivors.

To learn more or get help, contact us at 877-STEPS-94 or at STEPSHelpline@RisingGround.org.