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About Life Span
[quote]Life Span empowers survivors of domestic and sexual violence to demand safety as a human right through client-centered services and leads social change through accountability, community engagement and systemic advocacy.[/quote]
Statement of Philosophy
Life Span provides comprehensive services for women and children enabling them to stay together without violence, and/or to help women eliminate the abuse from their lives, build upon their strengths, and become self-sufficient. Life Span is committed to providing victims of abuse a range of non-residential options by defining domestic violence as a crime as well as a social problem. Life Span is also committed to reducing community acceptance and tolerance of abuse and increasing community awareness of domestic violence and sexual violence. Life Span provides community education and technical assistance to ensure responsive and appropriate treatment and delivery of public services to victims of domestic and sexual violence.
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History
Life Span was founded in 1978 by a coalition of women and organizations in the North and Northwest suburbs of Cook County to address the urgent need of battered women in the area for services.
In the last 34 years, Life Span has grown from a small, grass roots agency staffed by an Executive Director and a legion of volunteers to an agency employing 25 people. Our agency has grown from one which provided group counseling to one which is a leader in the provision of expert services from counseling and criminal court advocacy to legal representation in all types of family law cases. Life Span has created a number of innovative programs, including the Police Project, the Target Abuser Call Project in conjunction with the State’s Attorneys Office, and the Immigration Project. In addition, we are also the only agency in Illinois, and possibly the country, to put into practice Civil No Contact Orders for sexual assault survivors.
Throughout our history, Life Span has been true to its original mission, the eradication of domestic and sexual violence in the lives of its individual clients and in society. Our direct domestic and sexual violence services work toward this goal. In our advocacy and policy work, we use what we have learned from helping our clients, to create systems of change that positively impact survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
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[big_button link=”https://stage2.life-span.org/about/staff” color=”6C4181″] Meet Our Staff [/big_button]
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[big_button link=”https://stage2.life-span.org/about/board” color=”6C4181″] Meet Our Board [/big_button]
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