Summary:

Victim services must be open and accessible to all survivors of crime. An agency’s first steps to becoming barrier-free include examining the intake process to ensure it incorporates a victim-centered, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive approach. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn key strategies to increase access and remove barriers to victim services.

Summary:

What barriers get in the way of delivering quality victim services? What are the key strengths of your victim service organization? Capacity building includes identifying internal and external barriers that inhibit victim service organizations, allied professionals, or individual providers from delivering effective services to all crime victims. It also centers on building on existing strengths, enhancing skills, and providing new tools to overcome those barriers. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn the benefits of different approaches to capacity building.

Summary:

Understanding important concepts like privacy and confidentiality can be challenging as victim service providers navigate survivors’ safety, particularly as they collaborate with community partners. Moreover, it is a professional obligation to protect privacy and confidentiality. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn why confidentiality is an essential component of trauma-informed response and some key concepts and practices around confidentiality.

Summary:

Victim service agencies serve diverse communities that continue to grow and evolve. Therefore, agencies must align with these shifts by becoming culturally responsive. This approach ensures awareness of culture and identity are embedded into policies, practices, and environments. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn what it means to be culturally responsive and the key indicators and characteristics of culturally responsive services.

Summary:

A coordinated public health approach to victim services requires extensive collaboration and communication across systems. A multidisciplinary team, or MDT, is a set of agencies partnering to provide interagency, coordinated responses that center survivors’ needs, hold offenders accountable, and promote public safety. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn how to create an MDT and the key agencies that should be involved in this collaborative partnership.

Summary:

For many survivors, protective orders can offer one important pathway to safety. Victim service professionals must understand the key benefits and challenges of obtaining and maintaining an order to support survivors in deciding whether it will enhance their safety. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn about obtaining and maintaining protective orders. The video also provides an overview of trauma-informed, victim-centered, and culturally responsive approaches to assisting survivors with protective orders.

Summary:

Social media can be overwhelming, but it is vital that victim service agencies remain up to date on current trends and methods to reach diverse audiences as part of a comprehensive marketing plan. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn the basics of social media and why your organization should be using it, the major social media platforms and how to get started, and best practices when using social media.

Summary:

Maintaining a sustainability orientation in victim service agencies is key to keeping programs and services operating over the long term and preserving agencies’ ability to fulfill their missions. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn important financial and programmatic factors that support successful program sustainability.

Summary:

Understanding the impacts of trauma at the individual level aligns with a victim-centered approach. Both approaches require victim service providers to center survivors’ needs and priorities at all levels of the organization. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn some key concepts and practices in trauma-informed and victim-centered services.

Summary:

The victim service field is challenging, often making it difficult to focus on the bigger picture. To ensure survivors receive quality services and to promote the retention of valued staff, it is vital to focus on trauma-informed supervision. In this Back to Basics video, participants learn why providing and receiving trauma-informed supervision are important in daily victim services practice. The video will also provide an overview of key concepts and practices around trauma-informed supervision.

Summary:

Victims’ rights must be incorporated when developing and implementing system- and community-based efforts that impact survivors. It is critical for victim service providers to know and understand federal and state victims’ rights policies so they can advocate for survivors effectively. In this Back to Basics video, participants will learn how to locate victims’ rights statutes in state, territory, and federal law, and how ensuring victims’ rights can be empowering and trauma-reducing for victims.