MCASA spoke to Beth Anne Dorman, President and CEO of For All Seasons, the Rape Crisis and Recovery Center serving Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Talbot, and Queen Anne’s Counties. She has been serving the agency for over 10 years.
1. What makes the Mid-Shore community you serve special?
The Mid-Shore community is unique in that there are several communities within one. Our partnerships and cohesive environment truly make the shore a special place. While the bay bridge is only a 15 minute span between the Western shore and the eastern shore, there is a pause and beautiful space that the shore provides for people to visit and vacation. For those of us that live here year-round, there are wonderful opportunities to be able to dig into communities and serve in out of the box ways.
2. Tell us about For All Seasons's current community prevention efforts.
There’s also a great deal of need on the shore and innovative and proactive approaches are needed to continue to move services forward. What stands out for me most about serving on the Mid-Shore Community Foundation is that folks come to the table in collaboration to make the lives of our community members the very best they can be.
For All Seasons current community prevention efforts include media, billboards, word-of-mouth, presentations, and working directly with clients. You will find For All Seasons, represented at local activities, as well as statewide events, bringing sexual assault services to the forefront of every conversation. Representing the shore and leading with a preventative lens means that we are engaging in all communities. Our sexual assault prevention efforts include working with the local public schools, local colleges, hospital systems, law enforcement and states attorney offices and many community partners to ensure that we are creating healthy relationship climates, addressing the human trafficking that is taking place across our state, and ensuring that we are reaching far and wide, so that all of our community members know services are available.
3. Why are you a member of MCASA?
For All Seasons is a member of MCASA as a designated rape crisis center and more than that, we rely on MCASA for the many services it provides across the state: trainings for our staff and our communities, expertise and legal services for the clients that we serve, informative podcast and marketing materials, advocacy and funding- the list goes on. MCASA serves as a critical life line for all of the entities across the state to ensure that we are the most up-to-date with information policies, procedures, and assists us to address issues that directly or indirectly impact survivors of sexual assault.
4. What called you to your work?
I am most proud of the work that we have accomplished over the last 10 years to expand our services from serving just over 500 clients to now serving over 3200 clients each year and growing. Our organization has expanded and created a sustainable model across all five counties of the Mid-Shore. Our expansion of services means we are a leader in prevention and education, services for victims increasing our therapy and psychiatry services, while also eliminating our waitlist. We have also become a leader in the state for education and trainings and innovative out of the box thinking in the way that programs and services are delivered. And in each of these areas, we have strengthened partnerships across our communities and across the state as our true belief and motto is that “we do it better together”.
5. What are For All Season’s biggest challenges?
The biggest challenges that we continue to face are staffing and funding, transportation barriers within our rural community, technology challenges for those who may not have access to the Internet, and maintaining a consistency of grant and donor dollars to supplement the cost of doing business.
