Summary:

Interpreters are crucial in ensuring individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP) can access our programs and services as easily as fluent English speakers. To provide meaningful access and quality service provision, it's vital that service providers and victims with LEP have access to qualified interpreters. Advocates, interpreters, and partners must understand their roles to collaborate effectively. This foundational training helps victim assistance and other service providers who work with interpreters by including guidance on vetting, contracting, and preparing interpreters to work with victims of crime. The session covers interpreting standards, language access advocacy, and strategies for assisting LEP victims and survivors, such as recognizing when interpretation services are needed and identifying resources/partners proactively. The session also introduces information on developing language access plans.

Summary:

The basic and ever-present tenet of journalism is covering crime, whether there is a single victim or multiple. This creates a conflict between what news organizations may consider “the public’s right to know” and the traumatized person’s expectation of and right to privacy. Providers of victim services play a critical role in protecting those rights and helping victims cope with the media coverage immediately following a crime and during the trial and verdict. Understanding the media, its goals, internal pressures, training, or lack thereof, and the questions they could ask will help victim service providers better assist the victims and survivors whose lives were thrust into the public eye. This training provides participants with real, life-tested, usable tips on how to help victims navigate intense media interest and pressures and learn strategies on how you can help interested victims and survivors work with journalists to make sure their voices are heard, and their stories are represented accurately.

Summary:

Trauma notification is the process of informing someone that their loved one has been seriously injured, killed, or is missing as a result of a violent crime, mass fatality incident, disaster, or other traumatic event. It is one of the most challenging and stressful tasks that victim advocates and allied professionals face in their work. How you deliver the news can have a lasting impact on the survivor’s well-being and recovery. In this webinar, participants learn about a 4-step trauma notification model that can be used for in-person and remote notification and includes the consideration of factors such as cultural responsiveness and special populations. Additionally, you receive information on accessing a newly launched online trauma notification training developed by the FBI to help further enhance your skills and knowledge so you feel better prepared to provide a sensitive trauma notification with professionalism, dignity, and compassion.

Summary:

This webinar focuses on understanding the impact of vicarious trauma on teams and how collaborative partnerships are essential for delivering high quality services to victims and survivors and mitigating the impact of vicarious trauma on individual providers and organizations. Presenters highlight practical strategies for fostering and nurturing resilience collaboratively for individuals, teams, and interdisciplinary, cross-agency community partnerships.

Summary:

Collaboration is crucial in effective victim services. Co-advocacy is a shift to a more interconnected, collaborative, survivor-centered approach that involves intentional relationship-building and resource-sharing across both system-based and community-based victim service agencies and can invite additional community partners into the process to support survivor-identified outcomes. The survivor-centered and survivor-informed aspect is particularly powerful, as it ensures that the victims’/survivors’ identities, needs, and preferences are at the forefront of the process. Moving beyond historical disagreements and territoriality, building a culture of co-advocacy strengthens the support system for victims/survivors and contributes to the overall effectiveness of advocacy efforts. Co-advocacy, done well, is about recognizing that each agency involved brings something unique to the table, and together, we can achieve more—leveraging strengths, compensating for weaknesses, and working toward a common goal that serves the best interests of those affected by crime. When collaboration with the victim/survivor is centered clearly, it moves our advocacy beyond individual advocacy to make “warm handoffs” to intentional relationship-building and resource-sharing within their communities to best meet victims’/survivors’ needs. In this session, participants learn effective ways to engage in essential conversations and nurture approaches that promote co-advocacy.

Summary:

Learning about the key differences in cultural competency, cultural humility, and cultural responsiveness and the complexities of historical trauma among traditionally underserved members of communities impacted by crime is a critical factor in delivering trauma-informed services to victims and survivors of crime. This webinar discusses communicating the importance of cultural responsiveness and how to incorporate these concepts into practice for service delivery and program development to significantly enhance the services and support provided to victims of crime.

Summary:

Psychological First Aid (PFA) is an evidence-informed intervention for supporting people experiencing stress at any level to help reduce distress and foster adaptive coping strategies. PFA was designed initially to support people in the immediate aftermath of disasters, but its use expanded from the initial intent with the growing recognition of the benefits of PFA support in a range of stressful situations, from daily stressors to traumatic incidents. The approach is based on the understanding that people have predictable reactions to stress and that trauma is on the extreme end of the stress continuum. Most people will exhibit resiliency when stressed—this can be fostered and increased with information about early reactions to stress, encouragement to use existing coping skills, and providing a caring and compassionate presence. This webinar introduces the basic concepts of PFA that participants can use to support the recovery of crime victims and others impacted by trauma.

Summary:

We often look at what isn’t working within ourselves and within our organizations. Appreciative Inquiry takes an alternative approach and looks at what IS working. It is a theory-based change process that searches for the best in people and their organizations. It is a positive and strength-based approach that builds on our strengths, successes, and best practices to build resilient individuals and strong organizations. In this webinar, we’ll learn what Appreciative Inquiry is, the Appreciative Inquiry process, and how you can apply it in the victim services field on both the individual level to build resilience and the organizational level for positive change.

Summary:

During this training, participants learn how the use of a logic model is an essential component of victim services program evaluation and planning. Information and discussion on the relationship between resources, activities, and outcomes will help prepare participants to consider the range and types of program outcomes to track. These outcomes have valuable practical use beyond reporting and can be used to support program communications, fundraising, and grant applications.

Summary:

This presentation increases understanding of the effects of trauma on victims of violence, discusses best practices for providing trauma-informed services and assistance and identifies how this approach should be an integral part of broader community violence intervention efforts.

Summary:

Victim serving organizations often struggle with fluctuating funding sources and levels of support. The second session in this series explores the essential ingredients of complex grant applications: compelling statements of need, detailed budget justifications aligned with project goals and objectives, and quality outcome measures. Implementing these plans and using these tools will improve the odds of success in finding strategic and sustainable funding.

Summary:

Victim serving organizations often struggle with fluctuating funding sources and levels of support. The first session in this series explores two critical domains of sustainability planning—effective resource and partnership development—and helps participants apply strategies that build strong support for their programs, potentially leading to new funding opportunities. Participants create a diversified funding plan framework, which includes new approaches for expanding a potential donor/funder pool.

Summary:

Developing an intentional and consistent self-care practice is critical to help minimize the impact of work-related trauma exposure and maintain healthy resilience, but it is not a “one size fits all” concept. While traditional self-care activities, such as massages or yoga practices, can be valuable parts of a self-care toolbox, this webinar explores why it’s critical to recognize the importance of other factors, including setting healthy boundaries and accessing support as an integral part of a holistic approach to self-care.

Summary:

The principles of trauma-informed care provide a framework for our work in both victim services and allied professions. These principles guide our interactions with victims and survivors, and inform programming, policies and procedures in victim service organizations. This webinar reviews the ways the core principles of trauma-informed care can be applied to the use of language and images/visuals in direct services, within the organization, and in training and outreach materials.