This Advocacy Station addresses several frequently asked questions in regards to sexual assault advocates and their mandated reporting responsibilities in regards to minors. It also provides guidance on best practice procedures to eliminate issues in regards to over-reporting.
This Advocacy Station explores interpersonal strategies and individual approaches to compassion satisfaction and resilience building.
This summer, WCSAP released a support statement for the #blacklivesmatter Movement as a recommitment to our anti-racism work and allyship with African American communities. In that statement, we committed to being transparent about our ongoing process and to sharing tools that we find helpful along the way with our membership. We don’t have all the answers, but we want you to come along with us as we continue and deepen…
Like suicidality, talking about self-harm directly with young people who have been engaged in this coping mechanism can be hard. However, because such a vital part of our work as advocates is to discuss coping strategies and help survivors discover what mechanisms work best for them, discussions that involve self-injury, self-medication, eating disorders, engaging in risky sex, and other self-harming behaviors are integral.
Advocates are often the only people in a survivor’s life…
Confidentiality is the cornerstone of advocacy. While the basic principles of maintaining respect and privacy apply to survivors of all ages, consent and confidentiality issues become especially important and a bit more complex when the survivor is under the age of 18. By providing some clarity around these complexities, our hope is to ultimately increase minors' access to and utilization of advocacy services. Some of the issues that must be considered when working with minors are:
…Statistics can help people who are not familiar with an issue to understand it better. In the case of statistics about sexual violence, they can help community members, allied professional partners, and funders understand
It is important to use statistics correctly…
A multidisciplinary response to sexual assault cases is beneficial to our work and our communities. It cultivates communication and collaboration among service providers and system professionals; increases the effectiveness of criminal justice, social service, medical, and community interventions; and ultimately, it improves the response to and experiences of survivors.
This approach is most often supported through the development of teams comprised of the primary stakeholders who…
