The Family Place, a nonprofit helping victims of family violence in North Texas, has opened a new building for Faith and Liberty’s Project Battering Intervention and Prevention Program.
The Family Place empowers survivors of family violence by providing safe housing, counseling, and skills that create independence while building community engagement and advocating for social change to stop family violence.
In 1978, a group of community volunteers organized The Family Place as one of the first family violence shelters in the state. Today The Family Place is the largest family violence service provider in Texas, with three emergency shelters providing 177 shelter beds each night, including the state’s only shelter for men and children, and three counseling centers.
All the agency’s services are free and offered in Spanish and in English.
Faith and Liberty Battaglia were tragically killed by their father in 2001 as their mother listened through the phone. To honor their lives, The Family Place created Faith and Liberty’s Place in 2003.
Faith and Liberty’s Place (FLP) was created to provide a safe, neutral environment for supervised visitations or monitored parent exchanges. Parents’ issues stemming from domestic violence, such as divorce or custody battles, often get in the way of a child’s safety. FLP prioritizes the safety of both children and parents to prevent any abusive behavior.
Most FLP clients are court referrals due to a history of family violence. While clients must reside in Dallas county, they do not have to be clients of The Family Place. FLP is one of the only visitation sites that is free for clients, allowing non-custodial parents to spend time with their children without any financial burdens.
The visiting and custodial parents park in separate parking lots, enter through separate entrances and arrive at different times to keep both parties safe from interacting with their partner. When the custodial parent arrives, he or she leaves the children with an FLP staff member to facilitate the visit. Once the supervised visitation concludes, the custodial parent leaves with the children and the visiting parent must wait an additional 30 minutes before leaving the premises.
FLP allows children to maintain relationships with both parents while preventing any further conflict from arising. This one-on-one supervision of visits by an FLP staff member allows families to get the most out of their time together.
Faith and Liberty’s mother, Mary Jean Pearle, attended the opening of the new building for Faith and Liberty’s Project and Battering Intervention and Prevention Program.
