In 1999, our organization was able to increase services and accommodate more women than we ever had in the past. We added a four-bedroom house and a three-bedroom trailor to our shelter, almost doubling our capacity. Women and children were exposed to new experiences for the first time in their lives. Children visited museums and historic sites, and some went swimming for the first time in their lives.
        During the past year, we know these women and children found out there is more to life than a constant cycle of abuse. It is our intention to follow-up with these families at 6 months and then yearly to see if our positive approach helps to keep these women and childiren living violence-free. We were able to provide shelter to women with teen-aged children, which we were unable to do in the past. We were able to offer follow-up counseling and group sessions to graduates of our program, also a new feature.

        In May 1999, our staff conducted follow-up interviews with all 1998 program participants. We foundthat over 90% of all program participants maintained housing hta twas free from violence since they left our program. We also found that those who did return to their abuser all left our program in the first month. That means that our program was 100% effective in keeping women and their children violence-free when they were able to stay in the program more than one month. Compared to emergency shelters, where over 60% of participants return to their abusers, our program is having extreme success. This may be due, in part, to our screening process that rquires commitment on the part of women to make permanent changes toward independent or violence-free living.
        During this year, we housed (unduplicated) 40 women and 59 children. We provided 5,891 bed days. We provided 345 individual professional counseling hours to our residents, and 867 group hours. 99 residents took advantage of our provision of transportation to needed services, resulting in 10,701 miles driven. We took 128 crisis calls. We had a record number of volunteers (81) who put in a record 1,658 volunteer hours. Our staff participated in local, state and national workshops, conferences and trainings.