(Editor’s note: This is part 2 of 2 in a series on the Safe Homes organization. Part 1 is linked below.)
Five women gathered recently in a small town on the Kansas-Oklahoma border for the funeral of an 82-year-old woman.
They knew the woman well. She was physically abused by a son and twice sought help from the Safe Homes organization in Cowley County. The women championed her in life. They honored her in death. It didn’t matter that the five are among eight Safe Homes employees who were fired or quit between May and September. They still remembered. They still cared about all the men, women and children who sought their protection.
“It’s been so hard. We really felt like we had such a strong group of women working there,” said Jessie Muret. “Most of us worked really well together and had a lot of experience working with shelters and domestic violence. We’ve lost all that experience.”
Muret and Mari Cockran shared the administrative duties. Muret was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the non-profit agency, the shelter, and supervision of employees. Cockran lives in Oklahoma but had been writing and overseeing the various grants which helped finance the operation for 16 years.
Winfield-based Safe Homes had become a significant operation in that time.
A financial report provided board members in March listed sources of income totaling $519,870. In addition to the grants, the city of Wellington and Winfield were expected to donate funds this fiscal year, as were United Way groups in Wellington, Winfield and Arkansas City, according to the report. On top of that, the agency recently received a three year $400,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for a transitional housing program.
Muret said she and Cockran were both pleased initially when the board decided to make some organizational changes and hire an executive director who would take over the public relations and fund raising responsibilities. They thought that would give them more time for their primary responsibilities.
“The shelter is just a piece of what we did. People in our community need different kinds of help,” Muret said. “The backbone of the operation is the crisis line. Most of our calls were from women who experienced domestic violence or mental abuse. When you talk about domestic violence, you’re talking life and death situations.”
But Muret grew uneasy about the decisions occurring within the agency when the board of directors began making changes without asking for staff input. A new director, Jolan Csukas, arrived in March and the board decided to give Cockran and Muret new titles and cut their salaries.
While she didn’t care about titles, Muret did care about the organizational changes occurring as well as a cut in pay. Employee morale was at a new low and some worried if the problems were having a trickle-down affect with clients. Cockran and Muret both resigned before the end of May.
“I think the board of directors of Safe Homes did not know what their role should be. I don’t think they understand the regulations the board should follow. They don’t understand confidentiality,” Muret said. “We had members of the board providing services directly instead of referring. If you ask me, that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
Attempts to contact Csukas, who recently left Safe Homes when her contract was no renewed by the board, were unsuccessful.
CONSIDERABLE TURNOVER
Shasta Townsley was among the first to resign. She served an internship with Safe Homes while working on a social work degree. It was her job to make sure clients who were suffering from sexual assault or domestic violence did not slip through the bureaucratic cracks.
“We were excited about getting an executive director. Someone who could focus on our public image and free up the shelter director to do the job shelter directors are suppose to do,” she said. “We all worked as a team. We all helped each other. Everybody went to work happy. Then it got to the point we went to work to support each other, and to protect the clients.”
Townsley said she decided to leave after a confrontation with the new director and being told she had done everything wrong for two years.
“Things had been very stressful for over a year. It was mostly just stupid things happening with different board members. After the new executive director, it was constant stress,” Townsley said. “I was rarely getting home to my family before 6 pm. I was crying way too much and I’m not a crier. I’m very controlled.
“I just decided it was too unhealthy of a situation, and for my own sanity, I needed to leave,” she said. “I think in a way we were all just staying for each other.”
Outreach Coordinator Stephanie Bortz worked for the agency almost seven years. After the mass exodus of employees, Bortz found herself spending more time working in the shelter and less time with the 14 victims she was assigned from Cowley, Elk and Chautauqua counties.
“It was stressful, but I loved it,” Bortz said. “I felt like I was really making a positive impact in my community. It was the first job I ever had where I felt it was necessary.”
Bortz, who has a degree in journalism, was also happy a director was being hired. She knew Muret’s passion was working with victims and thought Muret should have more time for those victims. The director would take over the fund raising duties Bortz disliked, and she too would also have more time with her clients.
The staff soon lost their enthusiasm. They were unhappy with many of the changes and disappointed they hadn’t had an opportunity to provide some input. After taking their concerns to board members, the employees felt they could expect no support from the board as a unit, although several individual board members were very supportive.
“I was so stressed out,” Bortz said. We felt “no matter what we do, it’s not going to be right. I quit the day Beth Hoover was fired..”
Hoover worked in the Sumner County office in Wellington, first as a volunteer manning the crisis line and later as a replacement for an outreach coordinator who quit. In late August, a new employee and a board member walked into the office and announced Hoover had been fired and needed to hand over her keys and “get out.”
Hoover, although vocal about the changes that had taken place, wasn’t expecting to be fired. “There were no warnings, no memos. I was never told anything. I was not given a reason,” she said.
Bortz has another job now, but still worries about her former clients and was despondent that she wasn’t able to call them and tell them she was leaving.
“I’m very concerned about the victims in general getting the services they need because when we were fully staffed we were busy,” she said. “I am very saddened that the organization took a bad turn.”
EMPLOYEE CONCERN
Mike Westmoreland, one of four board members who walked out of an August meeting and never went back, said Hoover was “a thorn in their side because she spoke her mind and they didn’t want that.
“Employees were bringing concerns to us all the time. We just couldn’t do anything,” he said. “I know we tried to get somebody from state down to explain what was going on and help us out a little bit but she never made it down while I was on (the board).”
Jane Pipes started out as a part-time employee helping with a support group one night a week. Then she became an advocate for the kids caught up in domestic violence, went on to help victims get court-ordered Protection From Abuse orders, and finally, because so many employees left, became interim shelter director.
There were a lot of small issues that quickly grew into very big issues. The cell phones were suddenly turned off one weekend and clients couldn’t reach their case managers. Client files disappeared from the home. The new director took the mailbox key which left the shelter manager without access to shelter mail.
The security system was turned off because the bill hadn’t been paid. Then, Pipes added, she received a memo reminding her to water the sod. And then another stating drinking water could no longer be carried in the van used to transport clients.
“It’s August. It’s 100 degrees outside, and we can’t have water in the van. Maybe the van had gotten dirty, but treat us as adults,” Pipes said. “It was mostly pretty petty, it was just a power thing.
“We didn’t have enough employees so we were all doing two or three jobs, it seemed like. We all worked really well together. And we really were not getting any answers when somebody else was going to be hired,” she said. “We were suppose to be providing safe shelter for women who were leaving an environment that we were working under.
Pipes remembered working all of one day and through the night at the shelter because no one showed up to relieve her.
“I kept thinking things would change.” said Pipes, who has a degree in early childhood development with an emphasis on mental retardation and research. “I liked what I was doing. I think I did a good job. I think women trusted me. But, I wasn’t going to keep working under those circumstances and I didn’t want to get fired.”
SAFE HOMES NOW
Several new people have been added to the board of directors since the employees left. A new director, Linda Watson, has also been hired. Watson is a Southwestern College graduate who earned a master’s degree in administration from Wichita State University.
She was a teacher, assistant principal at the Arkansas City Middle School and was principal at Frances Willard Elementary School in Arkansas City before becoming executive director of the Bartlesville, Okla., school district.
The work Safe Homes does continues.
“The organization is alive and well,” said board president Rick Potter. “It’s moving forward. We are continuing to provide quality services to clients and always will in the future.”
