Sojourner Family Peace Center has been an affiliated center with Alliance for HOPE International since 2016. We have been recognized as a center that has successfully incorporated the Alliance’s 11 Guiding Principles and is following a best practices service delivery model that focuses on creating systems change by challenging the traditional way of providing services to survivors and their families that includes bundling services and integrating critical government and non-government services in a single location.
Sojourner and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin formed a unique partnership to create one of the first co-located child advocacy and family violence centers in the country. The new Family Peace Center is one of the first in the nation to provide comprehensive services for victims and families impacted by domestic violence. Using a proven, collaborative model, which combines co-located service providers in one easily accessible location, victims of domestic violence and their families have access to more integrated, streamlined and cost efficient services.
In addition to Sojourner programming (crisis housing, system advocacy and individual support), the Family Peace Center accommodates a number of co-located and visiting partner organizations and service providers. These organizations include Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin as well as the Milwaukee Police Department Sensitive Crimes Unit, Milwaukee Public Schools, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, Aurora Healthcare Abuse Response Services and others. Families receiving services at the Family Peace Center have access to a wide array of services to support their efforts to achieve healing, self-sufficiency and freedom from abuse.
Through this partnership, Sojourner aims to transform our community’s response to family violence, ultimately making Milwaukee and its surrounding communities healthier, safer and a more peaceful place to live. The co-location of services for individuals and families impacted by domestic violence eases the burden on both the victim and the community. Implementing this model promises to have profound benefits on the lives of survivors of family violence. A new campus and coordinated services reduces long-term generational family violence and treats the whole person – mind, body and spirit.
View our new “Hope Lives Here” evaluation report, which shares impact results of the Family Peace Center during our first two years of operation.
•	Reports of domestic violence tend to increase with the initial opening of the center, but decease over time. This trend is attributed to an increase in accessibility of services at the Center, followed by a move toward prevention.
•	In 2000, before the San Diego Family Justice Center opened, the city experienced thirty domestic violence-related homicides; in 2008, the city experienced three domestic violence-related homicides.
•	Family Justice Centers around the country report increased victim safety and empowerment, efficiency in collaborative services for victims among service providers, offender accountability and community support for services to victims and their children.
•	Family Justice Centers also report a reduction in homicides, reduced fear and anxiety for victims and their children and reduced recantation and minimization by victims.
View Sojourner’s Groundbreaking Ceremony Recap here.
View Sojourner’s Topping Off Beam Installation Ceremony Recap here.