Supervision

Working with young people who have been sexually assaulted can often be a daunting task for advocates and volunteers. Often, sexual assault advocates are tasked with "specializing" in so many areas of victimization, that it becomes overwhelming. How can one use the expertise that they already have to their benefit when working with young people? What barriers stand in the way of serving youth in a relevant and empowering way? In this webinar, participants will get an overview of what makes…

This webinar will provide an overview for Executive Directors and management staff on how to empower and motivate your staff to be invested in your agency’s success along with building your overall organizational capacity and sustainability. The webinar will address how to conduct an organizational assessment of your personnel management needs and provide recommendations for supervision, staff orientation, staff development, succession planning, training, workplans, and performance…

Sexual assault program managers are drawn to the coaching model of supervision because it is in line with the values we have in our field. The coaching approach is attractive because:

• it is strengths-based
• it is based on respect for staff members
• it encourages professional growth and development

When we coach, we listen more than we talk, we facilitate rather than control, and we work with staff members to come up with…

As we continue working during this global pandemic, employees and supervisors are adjusting to working from home — some of us for the first time in our careers. We’re accustomed to walking down the hall to speak with our co-workers, but now we must rely on Zoom, Slack, Google Drive, and a host of other virtual tools and resources that help us stay connected but force us to learn new ways to do our jobs.

Despite all of these challenges, our critical services and the relationships we’…

This training is geared towards individuals and organizations that see the need to take a bold move to improve the way our Movement provides services to survivors of color while also supporting advocates of color. Sexual violence is greatly impacted and made more complex by all other forms of oppression, but issues of racism have long been swept under the rug within our Movement. Many organizations promote anti-oppression work but aren't able to describe or demonstrate how they are…

When you have a staff member who has a negative attitude and doesn't really seem to care about the work, the first thing that comes to mind is "burnout." However, it is important to distinguish whether the attitude and behavior is a result of vicarious trauma — the changes in a person's inner experience that come about because of handling an overload of other people's traumatic experiences — or burnout, which is dissatisfaction with the job itself. In either case, it is important to assess…

This webinar will take an advanced look at a foundational skill in our work: communication. So much of advocates’ work with systems, survivors, and colleagues centers on effective communication. Advocates and managers are called to challenge the oppression woven into systems and do so while still maintaining a relationship to those systems. Sexual assault program staff are also responsible for challenging each other to grow in our understanding of oppression. Many of us come to the field…

Within our non-profit world there is an underlying burden that we place on our teams as it relates to navigating financial controls in work-related spaces. Our structures almost always emulate, favor and support the structures and professionalism of white supremacy. This is severely problematic in that it does not encompass and champion everyone through an anti-oppressive lens. As a result the following issues often remain unchecked when financial operations are left solely to one individual…

As a Community Sexual Assault Program manager, you are subject to a formal evaluation process by your supervisor, whether that is the Board, an Executive Director (if you do not also fill that role), or someone else. However, most of us really want to know how we are doing at our jobs — and for managers, that means getting feedback from those who are supervised as well as those who supervise us. How do you get feedback from your staff in an appropriate manner without having them feel like…

As advocates in the Anti-Sexual Violence Movement, we are all too familiar with the term and impacts of vicarious trauma. How then do we relieve ourselves of the imprints that a survivor’s story leaves on us? An important way of coping with the intensity of the work is to first acknowledge that it WILL affect you.

In an organization plagued with policies and procedures sometimes we forget to implement “practices.” A few practices to consider are:

• …