YWCA Monterey County

Mission: The YWCA is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all. Overview: The YWCA has served as a sole-source agency in Monterey County for domestic violence education, prevention, and intervention services, such as counseling, legal advocacy, confidentially-located safe shelter, crisis line support, and teen dating violence prevention. The YWCA's strategy for addressing domestic violence is four-fold: 1) dispense critical immediate support services; 2) provide strategies for healing once immediate crises pass; 3) provide education and counseling to break the cycle of violence in the lives of individuals and families; 4) advocate for public policies focusing on ending family violence. Programs and Services: We operate the Lawson Safe House, the only confidentially-located shelter for women and their children fleeing domestic violence in Monterey County. We provide an 10-week intensive program that allows women to begin a healing process and set up an independent lifestyle with individual counseling, support groups, and weekly case management as well as access to other services such as legal, employment, child care, schools, training programs, medical care and housing. Our Legal Advocacy program is one of only two nonprofit agencies in Monterey County that assists self-represented clients with temporary restraining orders and court accompaniment. Our Counseling Centers in Seaside and Salinas are staffed by pre-licensed marriage and family therapists and clincal social workers, providing counseling services to individuals and families on a sliding-fee scale. Our Youth Education & Advocacy Program conducts teen mentor trainings and youth support groups. Topics include roots of violence, self-esteem, domestic violence, teen dating violence, sexual harassment, rape, teen pregnancy prevention, suicide prevention, eating disorders, body image, and effective communication.