Help for victims of domestic abuse won’t be reduced after Butler County’s VOICe agency received an unexpected infusion of cash just days before voluntary layoffs were scheduled to occur.

Heidi Artman, executive director of the Victim Outreach Intervention Center (VOICe), called the development “a Hail Mary pass” that will enable the organization to avoid rolling back its all-hours response services or instituting waiting list for counseling services.

“We remain fully staffed and all services remain intact, and we’re moving along,” Artman said.

The organization, hamstrung by Pennsylvania’s protracted budget impasse that has frozen about $400,000 of its funding, had announced earlier that five employees had accepted voluntary layoffs that would take effect Oct. 15 and leave their positions vacant through Jan. 15.

The employees included an administrator, a domestic crisis shelter advocate, a housing advocate, a counselor and VOICe’s volunteer and outreach coordinator.

The move would have put all the employees on unemployment compensation and wiped out their access to VOICe’s health insurance plan, Artman said.

On Oct. 13, Artman said, VOICe was approved for an extension of its line of credit to $500,000 from $200,000, and it also received unexpected infusions of county and state funding.

Ann Brown, the county’s director of human services, said the county released $23,924 — a combination of Community Action and Human Services grant money — to VOICe earlier this month.

Artman said the credit extension isn’t without its own risk and pain.

“Yeah, it’s a risk. We’re incurring costs,” Artman said. “It’s going to be big interest on that line of credit, the (property) appraisal was expensive. The important thing is that services remain in place for Butler County residents and everyone remains employed.”

Part of the process to extend VOICe’s line of credit included a property appraisal to determine how much collateral the organization has on-hand, she said.

Artman said the funds would allow VOICe to operate fully until March, when it would have to explore extending its line of credit a second time.

“God willing, they pass a budget,” Artman said of state officials. “But if we have to look at increasing that line of credit further, that’s what we’ll look at.”