Hope House - Always Hope
A Beacon for Abused Women and Their Children
Heavier than before the rains came, darkness sets on the Lee’s Summit, Missouri, landscape with real weight. Spring storm clouds roll over Hope House as though it were on a conveyor belt being turned by Mother Nature. The women’s shelter seems calm against the menacing sky. The windows were lit warmly and perfectly square light falls filtered through the panes on the soaked lawn. This could be a house with an elaborate reading room, high-back leather chairs, and pipe smoke in the curtains.
This is what the outside says, but those deductions would be wrong. There are actually several libraries, but they are small ones relegated to desktops where employees sit and work through domestic abuse cases with the women and children at their heart. Hope House is Missouri's largest domestic violence shelter and whatever calm can be found there usually comes after months or years of loud screaming and crying.
Inside, there is a sense of survival. The women made it through their boyfriends’ and husbands’ fits of rage and have passed through to the other side: this shelter. And for some of the women, that fact makes it seem as though the employees are godsends and the shelter facilities are somewhat otherworldly, if not heavenly.
The organization has another location in Independence and the feeling there is comparable. Each location features a 52-bed shelter, early childhood center, therapy space, administration offices and community training facilities. For more than 25 years, taking in women who have been abused has been an ongoing story. In seeing to the women’s needs, they not only change their lives but also perpetuate hope.
“It’s really amazing how you can share the experience with your coworkers and how the community comes together and meets needs that are outside our ability,” said Carrie Rosetti, Human Trafficking Case Manager. “Within minutes, sometimes, you can go to a client and say, ‘Without seeing your face – without knowing your story – without knowing much about you except that you needed something to be safe, the people around me are standing behind you.’”
Rosetti said domestic violence affects families and communities to different lengths. Hope House has developed it services in an attempt to address every possible alley it might take. Victims often need shelter, counseling, legal services, and a plan that keeps them safe. Some preventive measures are taken in offering education and training through healthcare professionals, employers, and the public.
Much more than a shelter, Hope House’s programs and services go beyond providing temporary living space for women and their displaced families. Counselors and other staff people offer outreach therapy, court advocacy, a safe visitation center, and hospital-based advocacy. On-call women's advocates who work with area police departments. Staff members travel around the city year-round offering professional training on domestic violence for medical students, newly recruited police officers, corporations, hospital personnel, social workers, and prevention programs in area schools.
“Some of the problems we handle are so huge and so ingrained in society that even if we have law enforcement and prosecutor’s offices and this is all they worked on, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it will never just go away,” said Ilene Shehan, Chief Operating Officer of Hope House.
Shehan has stories to tell. They all involve survival, but the best ones involve change and overcoming obstacles. She tells about one mother without a job who came into the shelter with a small family fresh from an abusive “situation” and without any prospects of much in her life except starting over from zero. For some women, a new beginning is something more than what they had before they pulled open the doors to Hope House. And by the time this single mother had experienced Hope House’s services, she’d been imparted with the self-esteem and courage, both of which led her to finding a job. Shehan can tell this story a hundred times over. There are thousands of similar stories, and that is both the tragedy and mission of Hope House.
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