Life Span Client Services
  

Domestic Violence Counseling

Counseling: Life Span has a 24-hour crisis line. Our crisis line and group and individual counseling services are available in English, Spanish, and Polish.  Life Span counselors educate victims about their options and empower them to make and implement their own plans for safety and self-sufficiency.

• Adult Counseling:
  The length and breadth of our relationship with each client varies from a one-time crisis intervention to providing ongoing counseling to the victim and children.

• Teen Counseling:
  To further our goal of interrupting the intergenerational cycle of violence, we work with teens who have witnessed abuse in their home and/or who experience teen dating violence.

• Children's Counseling:
  Life Span counselors serve many children under the age of 12 each year.  The children’s program provides outreach to a number of schools, from Headstart programs to high schools.

• Client Employment Assistance:
  Life Span assists clients with career guidance, resume writing, Internet job searches and interviewing skills.  In working with clients, referrals may also be made to agencies that focus on job training, vocational training or education.  Life Span also provides referrals to childcare and other supportive service resources.

Legal Services

Life Span’s Center for Legal Services is staffed by our Director of Legal Services, staff attorneys, and legal advocates.  All services are free and confidential.  The Center serves residents of Chicago and suburban Cook County and services are available in Spanish, English, and Polish.  Attorneys with an expertise in civil litigation involving issues crucial to domestic violence cases provide direct legal representation in domestic relations to battered victims.

• Sexual Assault Project:
  The Illinois Civil No Contact Order Act allows victims of sexual assault to obtain a protection order against their attacker in civil court.  Attorneys provide representation in civil court to victims of sexual assault.  We are the first agency in Illinois to practice this remedy for victims of sexual assault.  
   
• Target Abuser Call Project (TAC):
  Life Span provides legal information, advice and representation to victims pressing criminal charges at the centralized domestic violence court house located at 555 West Harrison in downtown Chicago.

• Chicago Order of Protection Project:
  This project focuses on clients who have custody and visitation issues, victims of domestic violence who are defendants with an order of protection against them, and clients who are immigrants.

• Immigration Project:
  Life Span's attorneys and advocates provide civil legal services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault who do not have legal status in of the United States.  Immigration legal staff provide services in English, Polish, Spanish, and Arabic.

• Criminal Court Advocate Services:
  Criminal court advocates assist domestic violence victims who seek criminal orders of protection and criminal prosecution of their abusers.