Service Spotlight: Drop In Center

Our community hub, our public address – La Casa’s Drop In Center serves as an access point for victims and survivors of domestic violence through every step of their journey.   It offers a safe place to receive preventive and ongoing supportive services, in addition to the crisis interventions available to victims through La Casa.  It embodies our commitment to individualized and unconditional support – that you don’t have to leave your home to come to ours.

Yes – for some survivors, our Emergency Shelter program is a critical safe haven when danger in their homes prompts the decision to leave and seek greater safety.  But for other survivors, shelter isn’t what is needed or desired at a given time, or they have already exited the shelter program.  Our Drop In Center provides access to any of our services, so that all survivors – with their unique needs and situations – can receive support with both immediate and ongoing needs.

“I enjoy coming to the Drop In Center to talk to my counselor.  She helps me with my relationship and also helps me to become a better parent and make more informed choices.” -Drop In Center client

Through the Drop In Center, survivors can interact with our continuum of services in endlessly different ways.  For one person, this might mean choosing to meet with an advocate once or several times for information and education on healthy and unhealthy relationships, the signs of abusive dynamics, and how to create appropriate boundaries in a relationship.  Another person might choose to attend a weekly support group for many years, to connect with other women in community and healing.  Still another might come in for assistance seeking a restraining order, and to receive weekly counseling towards healing and greater independence.  And a survivor’s interactions with our service continuum can shift and evolve over time as her needs do.

La Casa’s prevention and intervention services also reach far beyond the walls of the Drop In Center.   Every day, La Casa’s staff and volunteers engage with community members in diverse settings – from schools to community fairs, social service organizations to businesses – providing education, information, and intervention around domestic and teen dating violence.  Advocates offer counseling and support on-site at locations including San Francisco public high schools, the San Francisco Police Department’s Hall of Justice, the San Francisco Unified Family Court, and two permanent housing programs.

Read more here about the many services accessible through our Drop In Center and where it’s located.