We need to talk about what’s happening behind shelter doors.
Let me start by giving a quick run-down of a day in the life of a domestic violence (DV) advocate:
In a DV shelter, there are three existing shifts – day, swing and grave.
This means someone needs to be at the shelter and available to answer the phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, every single shift, even on holidays. Why? Because DV doesn’t sleep. Why else? Because the federal funding requires it, and everyone is terrified of losing funding. ...