Phyllis A. DeMott, who has led A Safe Place / Lake County Crisis Center as Executive Director for 11 years, has been elected President of the Board for the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the organization dedicated to eliminating domestic abuse in the state.

DeMott will represent a coalition of 52 member domestic violence associations, large and small, rural and urban, setting the tone to address issues affecting victims of domestic violence and the services and support they receive.

Cheryl Howard, Executive Director of ICADV in Springfield, noted that the president of the organization needs to be someone who can see the big picture in working with diverse partners who still face many of the same issues collaborating with law enforcement, the justice system, other state agencies and so forth who may have different ideas about how to accomplish what is needed to best address issues concerning domestic violence.

“Phyllis is very capable of doing this; in her most recent role as Chairman of the Services Committee, she was very effective. One result of those efforts was a funding increase of $650,000 from VOCA funds directed toward children’s programming,” noted Howard.

Past president Linda Heely, of Mutual Ground in Aurora, IL, nominated DeMott for the leadership role and echoed Howard’s assessment of DeMott’s past accomplishments, including her work helping to design a statewide data collection system used by all domestic violence service providers that is funneled through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.

DeMott concurred with Howard that the major issues facing the Coalition and its members this year will be the continuing concern surrounding the State budget deficit and its possible funding implications for service providers, as well as challenges concerning privacy and confidentiality in a new wave of reporting and data collection within federally-funded victim assistance programs.

“While there certainly are challenges in front of us this year, there are also exciting opportunities,” said DeMott, “in particular in exploring new efforts to address the economic issues that survivors of domestic violence face. We will be studying models in other states, such as Wyoming , that assist women working to attain self-sufficiency.”