It is week 3 of SARCCitude, a series and practice we engage in each year to promote “A positive mindset where someone feels appreciative and inspired to return kindness to someone who works at, with, or for SARCC.” This week, we want to take a moment to honor the work of safe allied providers in our communities. This includes medical care professionals, mental health professionals, and first responders who help to identify, refer, and create safer environments for healing for sexual violence survivors.
As part of our values-driven work, SARCC seeks to hold compassion for those who hurt, and those who seek to understand the hurt. We also center safety, recognizing that survivor deserve to have safe space for healing and support, both within SARCC, and in our broader communities.
Medical Care Providers:
Medical care providers from primary care to urgent care to emergency care play a unique role in helping to identify signs of sexual abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking, and connecting survivors to appropriate referrals and resources. In our communities, we have had the privilege of working with Resident training programs for new doctors, SANE (sexual assault nurse, examiner) providers, and community health workers from hospital networks and federally qualified healthcare facilities to accomplish this. Between 50 and 90% of human trafficking victims will receive medical care while being trafficked.Many survivors of childhood sexual abuse do not even know to name it abuse. Providing proactive education, assessment, and referral in medical care settings makes a huge difference in bridging the gap for survivors of sexual violence.
Mental Health Professionals:
Many survivors of sexual violence have co-occurring mental health diagnoses, drug and alcohol, related concerns, or other life experiences that connect them to human service agencies. Some mental health providers in our communities are incredibly attuned to learning new information about responding to signs of trauma and victimization. Some of these providers have requested mandated reporter, training, trauma 1 oh one training, human trafficking, training, or sexual assault 1 oh one training from our prevention staff in the past year.Sometimes responding to the complex needs of a survivor of sexual violence requires a coordinated care approach. One of the benefits of integrating sexual assault counselor advocates into case management and coordinated system response with other mental health and behavioral health professionals, is that it allows for specialized expertise in sexual violence and the interconnected response systems to be a part of the problem-solving team. Additionally, sexual assault counselor advocates have confidential privilege that exceeds the limitations of even HIPAA in terms of confidentiality and protection. Many survivors of various forms of violence, fear exposure in legal settings of their healing related information. Integrating a statutory protected counselor advocate helps to ensure privacy and confidentiality for the survivor.
First Responders:
SARCC has had some unique opportunities during the past year to work in partnership with different first responders in both our counties. In school County, we completed two years of a rural violent crime reduction initiative with the Tamaqua Police Department. Through this training exercise, we were able to develop targeted goals, track victimization assessments, and how they aligned with police reporting in the region, and make some intentional plans to address issues related to sexual violence in that community. In Lebanon county, we worked in partnership with mental health providers, local police community foundations, and 911 dispatch operators to conduct a mental health strategic planning process through the communities that care initiative. Through these specialized partnerships, one of the things that became increasingly clear is how much first responders in our community care about sexual assault response. Despite being pulled in many different directions, they showed up with interest in curiosity, wanting to find ways to do better. We’re incredibly grateful to the first responders who proactively seek to connect survivors of violence to Community based advocates.
Even though we called out a few rock stars from our community in this post, we also want to emphasize that any member of the community can be a first responder to survivors of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment. Taking the initiative to learn the signs of abuse, and learning skills for how to respond in a supportive way makes a big difference in our communities. Survivors of violence will often tell someone they trust first. Their first call will not be to the SARCC hotline. Your Job as first responders is to help them make that supported connection to help and let them know that options and resources are available.
