An Update on SAFE’s Forensic Nursing Program — and the Bigger Picture 

On June 9, SAFE Alliance’s Forensic Nursing program at Eloise House sunsetted its services. While we remain hopeful that alternate funding sources and structures can eventually allow SAFE to operate this program again, we are currently holding this moment with the weight it deserves.  

For more than a decade, the staff at Eloise House have supported nearly 600 survivors each year in a space built around their dignity, their pace, and their choices. The nurses, advocates, and staff who showed up in the middle of the night — every night — change lives every day. We honor them, and we honor every survivor who trusted us with their care. 

Survivors have a legal right to forensic exams: Survivors in Travis County can contact the Brave Alliance to connect with nurses who provide forensic exams and dedicated medical care. They also have the legal right to a forensic exam at any hospital emergency department, regardless of whether they report to law enforcement. 

To contact the Brave Alliance’s 24/7 care team, Call: 512-738-8817 or visit bravectx.org/gethelp

What has not changed: SAFE’s sexual assault victim advocacy program continues, 24/7. Our advocates are available by phone, in person, at a hospital — wherever they are needed. SAFE’s advocates can accompany survivors to forensic exams, law enforcement offices, and courts and can also connect them to crime victims’ compensation, counseling, peer support, and legal services. 

We encourage people who’ve experienced sexual assault or any other form of abuse to continue to reach out to SAFE, even just to talk about your options/the resources that are available.

For our 24/7 SAFEline, Call: 512.267.7233 Text: 737-888-7233 or visit safeaustin.org to chat online.

SAFE is NOT closing.  We’ve heard your concerns and thank you for all your care and support that has carried us through this difficult time. We also want to be honest about the larger picture of how funding losses are impacting our work. 

The closure of the Forensic Nursing program at Eloise House did not happen in isolation. SAFE has sustained $5.6M in funding losses — nearly 20% of our operating budget — across federal, state, and local government sources, compounded by philanthropic losses hitting nonprofits nationwide. Organizations in our field typically receive about 85% of their funding from government, because the services they provide are foundational to public safety and public health. SAFE receives about 50% — a sign of intentional diversification — but when government pulls back this significantly, there is no safety net. This is not a financial management problem. It’s a structural funding crisis. 

We have reduced staffing by 20% in the past year. And right now, three more programs — Community Shelter, Planet SAFE, and SAFE Futures — are at risk unless they receive the proper investment survivors and our community deserves. We’re asking local, county, state, and federal leaders to act — because these programs exist where no other system does, and when SAFE can’t offer a service, survivors don’t find it somewhere else. They go without. They end up in other systems with far greater costs to them personally and financially.

And though the human cost of that is astounding and unquantifiable, the financial costs that increase and compound across systems don’t just affect survivors. They impact our community safety and our taxpayer dollars as well. When survivors can’t access care, they end up in courts, hospitals, jails, and even morgues. The costs of those systems are 4x higher than care at SAFE is for most services. Sometimes it’s as much as 25x higher, particularly if the program is homicide prevention related.

SAFE is resilient and will continue our work keeping Austin safe. We still have 20+ programs in operation and will always help survivors to our greatest capacity. We’re not going anywhere and SAFE is strong, but strength has its limits. The decisions being made in city halls, courthouses, and capitol buildings right now will determine that capacity and what we’re able to offer survivors in the months ahead. 

Local — City Hall 

• • The City of Austin is entering budget season with 20% cuts anticipated across the board. 

• • Call or write your City Council member and the Mayor. Tell them: don’t cut funding for SAFE. And fund the City-owned shelter at the $2.2M requested. 

• • Ask that if cuts must be made elsewhere, public safety dollars be preserved for the organizations keeping our community safe — SAFE, AFSSA, the Brave Alliance, Caritas, and others. 

County — Travis County Commissioners Court 

• • Planet SAFE exists largely to fulfill Travis County court orders for custody exchanges and supervised visitation. 

• • It is one of the only tools our community has for homicide prevention in domestic violence situations — and the County directly relies on it to fulfill its own court orders. 

• • Ask Travis County Commissioners to fully fund Planet SAFE. That reliance should come with a funding commitment that reflects it. 

State — Texas Capitol 

• • Texas holds a $24.8 billion Rainy Day Fund — taxpayer dollars sitting in reserve. 

• • Ask your state legislators to allocate $1.4M of these funds to SAFE for the next two years. This allows us to stabilize as we continue doing on-the-ground public health and safety work. 

• • These are your dollars. Ask that they be used to keep Central Texans safe. 

Federal — Washington, D.C. 

• • Ask your U.S. Senators and Representatives to preserve VOCA, VAWA, and HUD funding.  These funding streams were specifically created to support anti-violence organizations like SAFE. 

• • Without them, nonprofits doing this work cannot operate on sustainable models — anywhere in the country. 

Find your representatives at usa.gov/elected-officials 

Other ways to support SAFE 

New transitional and permanent supportive housing units — The Lancaster and The Sasha — are opening this fall and winter. Help welcome survivors home with the basics: pots and pans, toothbrushes, bedsheets, and everything it takes to turn a space into a home. 

And join us for a concert benefiting SAFE! School’s Out for (One More Week of) the Summer featuring Audrey Price and Boomershack — Radio East, August 2, 4–7pm.