Despite receiving financial relief from the city, Philadelphia’s only rape crisis center announced upcoming cuts to some of its services.<\/p>\n
As the state budget standstill enters its fourth month,\u00a0District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office\u00a0said Tuesday that it would be giving\u00a0a\u00a0one-time allotment of $90,000\u00a0to\u00a0nine victim services organizations in the city, including\u00a0WOAR Philadelphia Center Against Sexual Violence.<\/p>\n
MORE:\u00a0Philly airport won’t display Kristi Noem’s DHS video blaming Democrats for government shutdown<\/a><\/p>\n The Center City-based group thanked the community\u00a0on\u00a0social media<\/a>, saying\u00a0it will be able to continue its\u00a0advocacy, court accompaniment and group counseling services without interruption. But it said\u00a0one-on-one counseling and therapy sessions will only continue until Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n WOAR also said its 24\/7 hotline\u00a0is undergoing a shakeup, with staff, interns and volunteers\u00a0operating it on weekdays between midnight and 5 p.m. and members of the\u00a0Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) taking\u00a0over after 5 p.m. on weekdays and\u00a0on weekends.\u00a0<\/p>\n WOAR and RAINN did not respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Krasner said the stalemate in Harrisburg combined with the federal government shutdown has led to a “defunding of success” that impacts victim services groups. In addition to WOAR, the other eight\u00a0organizations that received $90,000 were: Concilio Philadelphia, Support Center for Child Advocates, Northwest Victim Services, Victim\/Witness Services of South Philadelphia, Central Division Victims Services, Women Against Abuse, Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia, and Northeast Victim Services.<\/p>\n The Pennsylvania Coalition to Advance Respect and the Pittsburgh Action Against Rape released a statement Wednesday warning that all 47 rape crisis centers in the state could be in jeopardy.\u00a0<\/p>\n “This marks over 100 days with zero funding, following five consecutive years of flat funding with no instate support,” the\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0said. “For 100 days, our centers have been forced to make impossible choices \u2014 cutting staff, reducing hours and closing programs. Survivors can’t and shouldn’t wait on Harrisburg to act.”<\/p>\n WOAR\u00a0laid off members of its staff<\/a> last week, but the center remains hopeful that services could fully resume when the necessary money returns.\u00a0It receives over 70% of its funding from the state, according to CBS News<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Due in large part to the ongoing state budget impasse, our ability to provide essential crisis response, counseling, advocacy, education and support services has been severely impacted,” Joanne Strauss, president of the board of directors at WOAR, said in a statement. “Survivors and staff alike now bear the burden of political inaction.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite receiving financial relief from the city, Philadelphia’s only rape crisis center announced upcoming cuts to some of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[222,2495,676,744,2494,69,71,70,2493],"class_list":{"0":"post-2818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-district-attorneys-office","10":"tag-funding","11":"tag-government","12":"tag-layoffs","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","15":"tag-philadelphia-news","16":"tag-sexual-abuse"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}