Hold Team Meetings . Monitor and Evaluate Your Efforts . Sustain Your SART . Know Your Team . Critical Issues
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Pick the Place and Time
In This Toolkit: Gaining Momentum for Unproductive Team Meetings (Word)
Make sure that your SART meetings are held in a location that is accessible and convenient and comfortably accommodates all participants.2 Consider rotating meeting places and times to accommodate different schedules and to give SART members a chance to become familiar with other agency settings. For example, Cuyahoga County, Ohio's SART usually meets at the same location for convenience, but it rotates locations periodically to acquaint members with different agency responses (e.g., the FBI hosted a meeting at the Cleveland FBI Headquarters to familiarize members with their work).
In the beginning, you'll likely hold planning meetings weekly or biweekly. Once your SART is established, you can move to monthly or quarterly meetings. In Reno County, Kansas, for example, the SART meets at the hospital every 45 days for a brown bag lunch. The meeting is very informal and usually lasts about an hour. The Fairbanks, Alaska, SART meets quarterly at the local hospital and invites the sexual assault response coordinator from the military to every meeting.
If your SART is running well, you may want to shorten the meeting time, skip a month, or meet only when issues arise or not at all. Be careful, however, about interrupting the momentum of these meetings. Problems may develop, standards may shift, relationships may break down, and, ultimately, without team meetings, problems could go unresolved. If meeting attendance declines, consider developing an evaluation form to help you identify ways to improve the meeting process.
