Rodriguez focuses on helping OCYFS’s clients find homes
The Rapid Re-Housing and community support specialist for Ouachita Children, Youth & Family Services, Jessica Rodriguez, focuses her work on helping her clients find homes but spends some of her free time with clients, as well.
“I like connecting with them,” Rodriguez said. “It kind of helps me decompress. I’ve had a long day at work and then I come to either the support group or the Getting Ahead class, and we’re just learning and laughing and just spending time together.”
Not only does Rodriguez assist domestic violence survivors with finding permanent homes and local resources, she also
gives presentations in the community regarding the services OCYFS offers in an effort to spread awareness.
The services OCYFS offers for domestic violence survivors include an emergency shelter for up to 90 days, transitional living for up to a year, free therapy services and housing assistance and advocacy, she said.
“We just want our community to know that we’re out here trying to help the survivors,” Rodriguez said.
Recent victims of domestic violence, including men, women and children, are all eligible for the services they offer, she said.
Rodriguez studied family consumer science at Henderson State University. Born in California, she moved to Arkansas with her parents at about 11 years old, she said.
“My parents are Mexican,” she said. “So my first language is Spanish and I’m so thankful for that. I’m able to help Hispanic people in the community, as well.
“A lot of people don’t reach out because they’re like, ‘Oh, nobody’s going to speak Spanish there.’ Well, I’m here,” she said with a smile.
Before becoming the Rapid Re-Housing and community support specialist for OCYFS, Rodriguez used to work in a hospital setting, she said. After that, she worked for the Department of Human Services.
“It wasn’t until I started working for DHS that I started seeing all the struggles that people in our community were going through,” she said. “They were going through poverty, food insecurity, they were going through domestic violence, homelessness, and it was just a calling to me.”
Before working at DHS, Rodriguez didn’t know how to identify domestic violence, she said, noting the victim may even be unaware they are living in domestic violence.
“I always thought about domestic violence as physical abuse, but it’s so much more than that,” she said. “There’s emotional, mental, financial abuse.
“A lot of our clients don’t have support and they don’t want to reach out to anybody,” she said. “Or their abuser has isolated them from their friends and family members. But we are constant in their life because even if they leave our program for one reason or another, move out of state, we are still here for them.”
Rodriguez said although her main focus is housing, she goes out of her way to help her clients in other ways as well. She answers phone calls to the 24hour hotline for crisis intervention and picks clients up if they don’t have transportation.
“There have been many times where we’ve jumped into our vehicles and gone out and picked up different people,” she said. “And we try to pick safe locations, but sometimes that’s not always the case.
“Sometimes, I’ve picked people up from gas stations and rural areas,” she said. “They’re so thankful that somebody was able to come and pick them up.”
Growing up, Rodriguez had friends and family who were going through domestic violence situations, but she said as a teenager, she didn’t realize there was help available.
“I just considered it, they’re going through relationship issues,” she said. “And now as an adult, and these family members know what I do, they’re like, ‘I wish that Ouachita Family Center would have been open during this time because maybe they could have helped me.’”
“They’re my inspiration for what I do,” she said.