Shelter looking to build bigger facility in 2024
Current site is old, crowded
Technically, the location of the current Women & Children First domestic violence shelter in Little Rock is “confidential.”
However, according to Executive Director Angela McGraw, that’s one of the “myths” that surrounds the shelter.
“The problem is we have hundreds of people come to our shelter dropping off donations,” McGraw said. “Then, of course, we have our guests that stay there. There’s a lot of people who know where we are.”
The shelter has, in fact, been at its current location for 20 years, around the time McGraw first joined the organization.
“After 20 years, people know where you’re at,” McGraw said.
It also doesn’t help that the building it’s located in is 115 years old, which comes with its share of plumbing and electrical problems.
“It feels like yearly we’re spending so much money trying to Band-Aid everything on that building,” McGraw said. “It’s just time to get out of it. I have staff that actually have desks in the hallways right now because we’ve run out of room.”
Then there’s another issue.
Domestic violence in Arkansas has only worsened over the past 20 years.
The shelter, which houses 54 beds and serves about 600 people each year, is “at full capacity all the time,” McGraw said.
These capacity problems reached an apex the day after Thanksgiving in 2017, when nearly 70 people were crammed into the facility.
“I asked my assistant director at the time, ‘Where in the world are you putting these people at?’” McGraw recalled. “I have this thing that we don’t need to refuse anybody because we would be devastated if somebody ended up getting killed or something because we didn’t have space for them. We put them on couches and love seats. We had playpens all over the place or kids were sharing beds, one end to the other end.”
In a given year, the shelter’s 24-hour crisis hotline gets 4,000 to 6,000 calls.
In 2023, roughly 6,400 calls were received.
And according to the organization, 37.3% of Arkansas women and 35.6% of Arkansas men experience intimate partner physical violence and/or intimate partner sexual violence in their lifetimes.
Because of these ongoing
challenges, Women & Children First, or WCF, has been working since 2015 to find a new home.
That’s when the shelter’s board voted to start planning on a move.
“In 2015, we fully anticipated the need to expand the shelter for the long term, so our planning for these new facilities has been a board priority since then,” said Cathy Browne, chairperson of Women & Children First’s Campaign of Courage Capital Campaign, in a press release. “Since that time, the City of Little Rock leased to WCF 3.79 acres upon which to build these new facilities.”
Thanks to almost $15 million in donations, relief is on the horizon.
McGraw said WCF hopes to break ground on a new shelter in March, with an expected completion sometime in 2025.
The new shelter will be 41,345 square feet with 132 bedrooms that each feature a private bathroom, a microwave oven, and a refrigerator.
“It’s unfortunate that we feel like we need to have that many beds,” but domestic violence in Arkansas has been “really up at the top” when it comes to statistics, said McGraw, who is a survivor of an abusive relationship. The state is usually “within the top nine or seven, at least, for domestic violence-related homicides,” she said. “There’s been a few years that we’ve been in the top three. That’s just uncalled for.”
Of the donation total, $7 million is from a HUD/ HOME-ARP Grant, distributed by the Arkansas Development Finance Authority.
The Windgate Foundation of Little Rock has also offered WCF a challenge grant of $4 million toward construction.
Unlike its predecessor, the new shelter won’t have a confidential location.
The facility will be located on Dailey Drive in southwest Little Rock, near an Arkansas Children’s Hospital clinic, a Health Department clinic and a Little Rock Police Department substation.
“Both the time and the location are ideal for fulfilling our planned expansion,” said Browne.
One of the new location’s features McGraw is most excited about is the inclusion of a dog kennel and an area for pets.
“One of the reasons why people won’t leave abusive relationships is because they feel like they have to leave their animals behind,” McGraw said. “I think that that opens the door for us to be able to help more victims who maybe feel like there wasn’t anywhere else for them to get services or to be able to stay out because they didn’t think they could bring their animal with them.”