SAFE Alliance commemorates 50 years of service

AUSTIN, Texas - The SAFE Alliance is marking 50 years of serving abuse victims. 

Later this week, SAFE Alliance will be commemorating the decades of service to Austin abuse survivors with its 50th anniversary gala.

FOX 7 Austin's Mike Warren spoke to Angela Glode, the chief officer of development, about a look back on their history and how they plan to continue supporting Austin in the future.

Mike Warren: Give us some background on the SAFE Alliance. How did the organization get to where it is today?

Angela Glode: Well, we started about 50 years ago, in 1974, our very first organization. Our predecessor organization was the Austin Rape Crisis Center. That began as part of a national movement to respond to victims of sexual assault. Shortly thereafter, the center for Battered Women opened in 1977. And those two organizations operated side by side for several years, before they ultimately merged to form Safe Place. About the same time. The Austin Travis County Center for Infants and Children opened in 1984, and that was the first children's shelter in the Travis County area there to take care of children in the child welfare system and in foster care. So that's sort of our long history. The predecessor agencies that make up Who's safe is today.

Mike Warren: Talking about history, what are some of the more important changes that have been made since the organization got going?

Angela Glode: Well, certainly the mergers that ultimately resulted in who we are. Safe Place, as I mentioned, was formed in 1998 between the Austin Rape Crisis Center and the Center for Battered Women. And then in 2017, Austin Children's Shelter and Safe Place joined forces to create what we are now, the Safe Alliance. Working together, we realized that we could do so much more to help stop these cycles of violence, because those cycles tend to happen from generation to generation. And so, if we can work in all the areas, violence doesn't happen in silos. It happens in families and it happens in relationships. So making sure that we can address child abuse, whether and through prevention and early intervention, dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, all the different areas that we operate.

Mike Warren: Looking ahead, tell us about the plans for the future of SAFE Alliance. 

Angela Glode: Well, one of the things that we've learned over the last 50 years is that our key strength is our ability to pivot and respond to current community needs. So it's hard to say what we're going to look like in 50 years. But right now, we're excited about some new housing projects that are coming online and, working more closely, in the area of child welfare, particularly in the areas of foster and adoption. We're excited to celebrate the 16 adoptions that our Foster and Adoption Austin program made possible this year, and also these really great early intervention and prevention programs around child abuse and neglect. Working with families when they're young, before there are big, real problems, making sure that families know how to cope with stress, how to navigate systems and processes. Just working to strengthen and fortify those family structures.