Shelter House

Project: To help purchase a building for Shelter House Outreach and Administrative services.

Shelter House is the only certified domestic and sexual violence center serving Okaloosa and Walton counties. Over the past four years, Shelter House has helped 6,511 women, children and men escape, survive and heal from domestic and sexual violence by providing more than 30,000 counseling hours and 123,000 services. Every year more women, children and men take advantage of their services. With advocates and administrative staff forced to share offices and counseling space, they were in urgent need of updated facilities which would allow them to better serve victims.

With funding provided by the Impact Grant, Shelter House purchased an office building for its main program office in Fort Walton Beach. The building houses the outreach program and administrative offices. While the Emergency Shelter provides victims of domestic and sexual violence with a safe place to temporarily live, the outreach program provides services to women, children and men who are domestic and sexual violence victims living on their own or with a friend, in the shelter, in one of Shelter Houses transitional apartments or, in many cases, still living with their abuser.

Everyone Shelter House works with receives a number of services, including access to a giving closet, legal support, therapy, support groups and a victim advocate. In the past four years, Shelter House has expanded services to include domestic violence support groups, Spanish speaking groups, mental health support groups, rape crisis services, economic empowerment, literacy, mental health therapy, child therapy and childrens groups.