Training and Technical Assistance

Highlights

National Victim Assistance Academy Innovates To Educate the Field

OVC's National Victim Assistance Academy (NVAA) integrates the latest advances in skills, knowledge, and theory to offer an outstanding educational experience to the victim services field. All courses are taught by teams of nationally recognized scholars and practitioners with in-depth practical experience in victim assistance. In 2011, OVC TTAC presented spring and fall NVAA sessions in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Madison, Wisconsin, for 189 participants—79 of whom received Continuing Education Units to add to their professional credentials. The academy offered three instructional tracks geared to levels of expertise: a foundation level, professional skills building, and a Leadership Institute. The Advanced Trainers Institute, which incorporated intensive skill-building exercises, was introduced in Albuquerque for students interested in joining OVC TTAC's national network of consultants. NVAA students at both events were highly positive about the intensive learning experience, with one comparing the quality of learning to that of Harvard.

Committed to maintaining these high standards, OVC TTAC is in the midst of redesigning NVAA's current classroom delivery method to take a blended approach that incorporates cutting edge e-learning technology. OVC's aim is to provide a cost-effective training that extends far beyond current training capabilities and maintains the quality of the learning experience. In the meantime, the Foundation-Level Training Curriculum is available for service practitioners to download and use.

"Training by Request" Makes Trainings More Accessible to the Field

OVC TTAC's innovative Training by Request program, implemented in 2011, brings needed training to specific locations at minimal cost. OVC TTAC provides the instructors, all instructor materials, an onsite coordinator, and a manual for each participant at no cost to the host organization. The full array of curriculums listed in the OVC TTAC Training Catalog is available for presentation. Since the program's pilot training in early 2011, OVC TTAC has partnered with a variety of organizations to bring quality learning experiences to nearly 150 professionals in local communities across the Nation. Training by Request replaces an annual schedule of workshops and continues to grow as the field becomes familiar with its quality, flexibility, and cost effectiveness.

OVC TTAC offers customized training and technical assistance to meet organizational skill-building needs by sharing best practices and enhancing the field's capacity to provide sensitive, effective services to all victims of crime. In FYs 2011 and 2012, OVC TTAC held 109 tailored trainings and technical assistance consultations, many focused on underserved populations throughout the United States and U.S. territories, from American Samoa to Alaska.

• When Parents Encouraging Accountability and Closure for Everyone (PEACE), a grassroots organization in Buffalo, New York, requested tailored training to improve the community's response to child victims, OVC TTAC presented "Supporting Children Living with Grief and Trauma." Participants praised the training as informative and easy to understand. One attendee commented, "I have a degree in trauma counseling that took a year to get and I got what I really needed from OVC TTAC in 2 days."
• OVC supports the development of a broad array of educational and outreach materials for the field. For example, in 2012, OVC awarded funding to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) to produce Service, Support & Justice: Law Enforcement Response to Crime Victims, a training video that sets forth the 21st Century Strategy for federal, tribal, state, and local law enforcement at all levels to work more effectively with crime victims. IACP produced resources for implementing the strategy and an online toolkit with OVC support.
• OVC TTAC continually assesses the need for training in overlooked or underserved areas, and in 2012, introduced two new training curriculums. Serving LGBTQ Survivors of Violence and Serving Survivors of Homicide Victims were produced to help close practitioners' gaps in knowledge about how to assist these two populations with sensitivity and skilled competence.