Category: Victim Services/Advocates
Victim Services and Conduct Policy Assessment Tool
Integrating Victim Services Into Policy
Conduct Processes: How Victim Service Advocates Can Support Campus Survivors
Many victim service providers – including community and institutions of higher education (IHE)based – are familiar with helping survivors of dating/domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking (DVSAS) through the conduct disciplinary process. Victim advocates provide invaluable support to survivors, including helping to file complaints, those who have filed complaints, and those who struggle to keep up with dates, paperwork, and recovery. Victim service advocates who work with student survivors of DVSAS should know about the process of filing a complaint with the students’ institution and how to support them through it, which provides many potential remedies. The victim advocates must understand that to help student survivors decide if they want to file complaints, there is IHE Conduct Process and the Criminal Justice system. This guide provides an overview of an IHE conduct process to help victim service providers support student survivors to make informed choices.
Building Strong Campus Partnerships
We can begin with targeting key campus leaders – including executives, administrators, faculty, staff, and student leaders. Endeavor to involve formal and informal leaders. Formal leaders may have the authoritarian position to create systems change. Informal leaders can influence changemakers on campus. The goal of building relationships and alliances with these individuals is for them to become champions of interpersonal violence work on campus. Plan to be available to invest long-term in these relationships. Executive leadership can often change so ensuring that you are intentional about engaging campus leadership on a consistent basis is key. Do not consider it an offense that you may have to justify your work. Instead approach these alliances as an opportunity to inform, educate, and advocate.
The Role of the Advocate
The responsibilities of the Campus Advocate in providing victim services on a College or University campus are multifaceted and comprehensive yet individualized in their approach. It requires strategic thinking, effective communication, relationship building, coordination, strong interpersonal skills, acute knowledge of federal, state, local, and campus policies, planning and program development skills, and intense crisis and trauma counseling and management responses. The Campus Advocate serves as a broker for on-and off-campus resources and referral sources. Campus Advocates are the voice for survivors, a source of information, a skilled support counselor and case manager, comfortable with program development, and systems engineering responsible for building a positive, safe, and violence-free campus culture. Therefore, the Campus Advocate must be able to develop and sustain relationships with campus partners, community partners, and students to prevent and effectively respond to interpersonal violence on campus.
Building Strong Community Partnerships
The Campus Advocate is not only focused on building solid relationships with students and the larger campus community. The role also requires strong relationships with the community and local providers. Some local providers are offering interpersonal violence (IPV) education on campus are the designated providers for domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and/or stalking cases, SANE exams, alternatives for reporting, and support in such cases. In addition, how students experience local services can create a challenge for Campus Advocates requiring dedicated attention and focus. Consequently, it is vital that the Campus Advocate understand the landscape of providers in the local community and that the expectations of how the two will work together are clearly articulated. This document will provide Campus Advocates with direction on building solid community partnerships.
Know Your Rights: The Take It Down Act
The Take it Down Act (TIDA) makes it a federal crime to publish intimate images without the consent of those pictured, including AI-generated content or deepfakes. The law requires certain online platforms to establish a process to remove nonconsensual intimate images within 48 hours. This guide summarizes adult survivors’ rights under the law, outlines available legal and platform-based remedies, and highlights where to find comprehensive support and assistance.
Informal Resolution Agreement Template For Colleges and Universities in Cases of Dating and Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Stalking
This guide offers a template for writing IRP agreements that outline action items and terms agreed upon by the parties and institutions in cases of DVSAS. Because of the range and adaptability of these processes, informal resolutions will differ across campuses and cases, but typically, written agreements contain several categories of information.
Safety Planning: For Students Responsible for Sexual Misconduct on Campus
This guide is designed to offer campus staff a tool to explore a similar Safety Planning process for responsible students, student who have/or concerned about engaging in sexual misconduct. Safety Planning is the process of developing a structured plan to identify specific boundaries, strategies and supports to reduce risk of causing harm. Through this overview, the reader will learn about the resources, research and knowledge needed to implement a plan; and, most of all, assess whether this is a process that makes sense for a particular student, situation, and campus.
Designing and Implementing Informal Resolutions: Key Considerations for Colleges and Universities
Informal resolution is an umbrella term, covering a range of processes and practices considered alternative to adjudication in cases of dating and domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking (DVSAS) at institutions of higher education. Often including pathways such as mediation, restorative justice, and shuttle negotiation or facilitation, informal resolutions are sometimes referred to as adaptable or alternative resolutions. Despite their name, these processes require no less intentionality than those involving investigation or hearings to respond effectively to sex and gender-based harm.