In 2020, Danyele Velez felt lost, ready to give up. She had buried her two-year-old daughter, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Lorain. Later, Velez moved to Cleveland after leaving an abusive relationship. She had to find a way forward. She had four other children who needed her. 

That’s when she found the Brenda Glass Center, a trauma recovery facility that provides therapy, shelter, and other resources. 

Velez started going through counseling at the Brenda Glass Center and received several other services that helped her get back on her feet, she said. 

“I don’t know where I would be without Brenda,” Velez said of Brenda Glass, founder and CEO of the center. “I would just be so lost.” 

But services at Brenda Glass Center and other trauma recovery organizations nationwide are at risk as the federal government considers cuts to the Victims of Crime Act assistance grants, commonly known as VOCA grants. 

The Fiscal Year 2024 U.S. Senate Appropriations bill that includes VOCA funding – which has yet to be approved – sets a $1.2 billion cap on the crime victims’ fund. The federal government gives that money to states, which then distribute it to local victims’ service centers like Brenda Glass’s.

The proposed 2024 funding is $700 million, or 37% less than fiscal year 2023. 

Funding cuts could reduce services, close doors

Victims’ advocacy organizations nationally and locally are asking the Senate to reconsider. 

In a letter to the Senate Committee on Appropriations, which approved the bill in July, victims’ advocacy organizations asked that Congress provide the $700 million using other funds. 

Shakyra Diaz, chief of federal advocacy for the Alliance for Safety and Justice, one of the organizations that signed the letter, said funding cuts could mean centers have to close their doors, cut staff or turn people away.

The 51 trauma recovery centers in 12 states – eight of which are in Ohio – provide counseling but also “wraparound” services, like help with grocery shopping, transportation and child care. The advocacy groups say these services are necessary to help crime victims get back to a stable life and reduce their reliance on other social services. 

For Velez, the Brenda Glass Center provided a place for her and her children to lay their heads, allowing her to focus on finding a job at MetroHealth Hospital, she said. Glass helped Velez find daycare for her four children. She helped Velez get more permanent housing through Emerald Development and Economic Network’s long-term supportive housing program. 

“Whatever it was, she always made you feel like there’s a way [she] can help in some way no matter what,” Velez said. 

Now, Velez owns her own car. She is also in the process of becoming a homeowner through Habitat for Humanity’s First Time Homebuyers program, she said. Her children are all in therapy. 

Addressing practical, emotional and spiritual needs

VOCA grants currently make up about a third of Brenda Glass Center’s funding, Glass told Signal Cleveland.

The center gets two grants totaling $335,000 from VOCA funding, Glass said. Those grants are helping fund the center through September 2024. 

And while she has recently obtained other funding, Glass said it would be difficult to continue to offer the services she does without VOCA money. 

“When the services are not available, and people are not able to do the work to the fullest extent, it’s no longer a trauma recovery center,” Glass said. “So then what do you do at that point?” 

It’s important that victims of violent crime get more than just safe shelter or just mental health counseling, she said. Her center, and other trauma recovery centers, help address practical, emotional and spiritual needs, Glass said. 

“You can’t provide somebody with mental health [care] and then send them back into their dangerous situations and think that that’s going to help them,” she said. “And you can’t provide people with safe shelter and don’t give them mental health [help] because they’re going to just take all that horror and trauma and drama from their dangerous situation into your safe situation.”