MID-HUDSON – Three victim services organizations in the Mid-Hudson Valley are calling on the State Office of Victim Services, Governor Hochul and the State Legislature to investigate funding decisions and conduct an independent review of its recent award procedure.
The 2026-2028 awards reduced funding by nearly 50 percent for Family Services in Poughkeepsie, by 30 percent for Fearless! in Newburgh, and My Sisters’ Place in White Plains by 45 percent.
Other organizations around the state also experienced ‘significant cuts’ or lost their funding altogether.
“Victims cannot postpone their need for safety, healing, or justice.” Said Leah Feldman, chief executive officer of Family Services. “These reductions threaten the stability of services that people depend on during the most traumatic moments of their lives.”
“A funding reduction of this magnitude cannot be absorbed by a single program or funding source. It will also inevitably weaken the entire service delivery system resulting in reduced staffing, diminished capacity, and fewer services available to victims across multiple programs,” said Kellyann Kostyal-Larrier, executive director of Fearless! “It will also disrupt the coordinated network of community partners – including law enforcement, prosecutors, healthcare providers, and fellow victim service organizations – that relay on our agency’s expertise and infrastructure to provide effective, coordinated responses to victims of crime.”
The agencies, as well as other victims’ services providers, submitted freedom of information law requests seeking information about scoring methodologies and funding decisions, and the officials said those requests, as well as requests for meetings with the Office of Victim Services, to better understand the process behind the reductions, have received no response to date and some have been denied.
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