$16.3 million cut from Women’s Aid
Santa Cruz will be seeing some major budget cuts to their programs that aid battered and homeless women. One organization that is being greatly affected is Women’s Crisis Support-Defensa de Mujeres(meaning Defending the Women) has already seen employees let go, work days/hours being, pay cuts at 20% and they even won’t be able to hire defense attorneys that represents women in court for various offenses or restraining orders, all due to the budget cuts. The remaining employees can be found outside their building during lunch, openly protesting the states budget cuts. There are still cars who honk in support, but the number of protesters is getting smaller and smaller everyday. Also making matters worse is that most citizens of Santa Cruz aren’t even aware of the effect the cuts are having. The problems don’t stop there, they no longer are able to keep their prevention programs, counselling, therapists, also their youth and children programs. Of those programs, 5 positions were terminated, which includes two open positions and an administrator. The finger of blame is being pointed towards Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for cutting out the funding to the Domestic Violence Program,which was being ran by the state Department of Public Health, that was bringing in $16.3 million in funding to 93 of California’s Domestic Violence Centers/Shelters. An estimated $477,000 was being given to Women’s Crisis Support-Defensa de Mujeres which in turn was being used to help around 1,500 women, and children if they have any, who now won’t have somewhere to turn when times get too ruff. The Women’s Crisis Support-Defensa de Mujeres will continue to provide their remaining services, but with funding being cut for the whole state makes their future outlook very bleak.
“We’re getting positive reactions because some people don’t know that our services are cut,” employee Maria Barranco said. “We’re getting support from the community asking questions about what’s going on: What are we going to do? What are they going to do in order to receive services? They’re concerned about if anything were to happen worse than what we’re going through now, they’re not going to have a place to go to,” said Barranco, who works at the 21-bed shelter and oversees the 24-hour crisis line, two programs that survived this month’s cutbacks.
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