SURVIVOR-CENTERED ADVOCACY

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This project is supported by Grant No. 2012-TA-AX-K056 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this presentation are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.

About Transforming Communities: Technical Assistance, Training and Resource Center (TC-TAT)

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17 years providing intensive training, technical assistance and resources to organizations

working to end violence against women.

Embarking on a two-year project funded by the Office on Violence Against Women to

offer technical support, training, and resources to organizations in all 21 OVW funded

program areas.

For more information on our services and resources, visit

www.transformcommunities.org

Future Training Events

Webinar archives

Resources and Online Tools

Webinar Objectives: You will learn or deepen knowledge about: • Principles of survivor-centered advocacy; • Intention vs. impact of common advocacy practices and

what we do to “keep survivors safe”; • Promising practices in survivor-centered advocacy.

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On Today’s Webinar: Your Trainers

• Judy Chen, MPA, Director of Strategic Initiatives • Linda Olsen, MSW, MA, Housing Coordinator

TC-TAT facilitator: Christopher Watson And you!

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www.wscadv.org www.canyourelate.org www.buildingdignity.org

POLL #1 • Which role best describes you?

• Domestic violence survivor advocate • Sexual assault survivor advocate • Dual DV/SA advocate • Manager • Executive Director • Other)

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Agenda

1. Welcome

2. Leadership in advocacy

3. Principles in survivor-centered advocacy

4. Intention vs. Impact of common advocacy practices

5. Promising practices in survivor-centered advocacy

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But first, let’s review • Advocates are wonderful people

• Your work is: • Very important • Very difficult • Under-valued

• Pausing to reflect and re-align can reduce stress and improve our work

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The world has changed • In the past 30 years, a lot has changed.

• Economy, housing costs, income disparities • Technology • Legal rights

• We’ve been very successful…

• Public opinion on rape and abuse • Laws, public policies • National network of crisis services • Funding

• … and now, to keep up with the we get to decide how we’ll keep up with the times. • Keep doing? • Stop doing? • Start doing?

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LEADERSHIP IN ADVOCACY

Heroic Leadership in Advocacy • Individual • Super-human

• High profile

• Rescuing

• Knows the answers

• Leads people

• Linear success

• Defends the fortress

• Fights villains and oppressors

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(Thanks to Leadership for a New Era’s “Race & Leadership” paper)

Shared Leadership in Advocacy • Shared, widely dispersed • Systems thinker

• Low profile

• Accountable, vulnerable

• Supports and coaches

others to solve their own problems

• Pauses to ask questions

• Learns/Reflects/Praxis

• Bridges and makes connection

• Organizes to build collective power

• Recognizes our movement’s strengths and shadows

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(Thanks to Leadership for a New Era’s “Race & Leadership” paper)

Karpman’s Drama Triangle

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Ideas based on work of Seattle Rape Relief, Patricia Vivian, and Stephen Karpman

VICTIM/victim

PERSECUTOR/persecutor

RESCUER/ rescuer

Is our advocacy designed to… o Avoid trap of

dehumanizing people who harm others?

o Recognize survivors’ strengths?

o Avoid covertly controlling others through rescue?

“The program was in crisis when I started so I began operating from that crisis mode.“ (executive director from a WSCADV member program, 2006)

Getting to survivor-centered advocacy isn’t just about individual advocacy or advocates…

… it’s also about: • Program structure • Facilities • Organizational

culture • Budget

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PRINCIPLES IN SURVIVOR-CENTERED ADVOCACY

Advocacy – Philosophical Differences When it centers on systems: o “Safety -> independence” oNeeds-based oOne-size-fits-all oSurvivors connect to

providers oCares about trauma oCulturally inclusive oAccountability is for people

causing harm – and survivors

When it centers on survivors: o “Self-determination ->safety” oStrengths-based oCenters marginalized survivors oSurvivors connect to

community oFacilities and services

designed to remedy trauma o “Beyond inclusion,” attention to

structural racism/oppression oAccountability is for everyone

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Advocacy – It Looks Different When… When it centers on systems: oSafety planning at beginning oConfidentiality-ish; incumbent

on survivors oFacility-centered oMandatory services oRules in abundance oChildren see non-abusive

parent obeying staff, systems oDefends the fort that we’ve

built

When it centers on survivors: oSafety planning every time oConfidentiality incumbent on

advocates oMobile, flexible locations oVoluntary services oMinimal rules oChildren see non-abusive

parent helping them heal oEngages survivors and

community to adjust course

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When are people seeking our help?

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Level ofViolence/Abuse &EntrapmentResources &Connection

When we see people

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Credit: Connie Burk, of the NW Network for Bisexual, Trans, Lesbian and Gay Survivors of Abuse

Questions? Comments? Disagreements?

• (Christopher – please add reminder instructions on how to type into the chat)

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INTENTION VS. IMPACT IN OUR SERVICES

Where do you see gaps between our very best intentions and the impact on survivors? (INSERT POLL #2: When you think about how you intend advocacy to work, vs. how it actually plays out with the survivors you work with, where do you feel biggest gap? What keeps you up at night? CHOICES:

• We aren’t working enough to prevent rape, abuse, and re-victimization.

We’ve got to move upstream. • I try to do trauma-informed advocacy, but our services aren’t really

designed to support survivors healing from trauma. • We’re not working on what matters most to survivors, like staying in

relationships, jobs and income, and their healing for their kids. • Our work feels unsustainable: financially, emotionally, and facing a tidal

wave of need. • Other: my concern isn’t listed here. • Nope, I don’t see any big gaps between the intention and impact of my

advocacy.

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Survivors often want… 1. A life defined by more than violence and abuse.

2. Help with their relationships

3. Emotional support, connection with others

4. Help & protection for children and next generation

5. Being/Feeling Safer – in abusive or unhealthy relationships; if trying to leave, already left, or returning to them

6. Basic Needs – housing, income $, food, transportation

7. Health & Well-being – healing from trauma, physical, mental, emotional, religious/spiritual, chemical dependency

8. Help with Law/Systems – criminal & family law, immigration, child welfare

How is this the same or different than what services are designed to do?

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What Gets in the Way? A few ideas… • Heroic leadership model and rescue traps • Crisis hamster wheel • Service design and delivery centered on systems

(including our own) • Legal definition of DV and rape vs. survivor-centered

definitions • Enmeshment with funders, stakeholders • Sticking with the reality of survivors 30 years ago – what

made sense then • What else?

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Questions? Comments? Disagreements?

• (Christopher – please add reminder instructions on how to type into the chat)

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A Few Common Areas of Gaps in Intention vs. Impact • Facilities, centralized location of services • Support groups • Rules • Time orientation of services • Prevention • Menu of services, what survivors believe they must do to

meet basic needs • Cultural relevance • In DV – working to heal harms of abuse on kids and

parents

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A FEW PROMISING PRACTICES

A Few Emerging Practices

1. Mobile/Latina advocacy 2. Rethinking Shelter Rules 3. Trauma-informed facility design 4. DV Housing First 5. Working with chemically dependent survivors

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Caveats: • No one-size-fits-all solutions • Praxis – learning by doing – no quick fixes • Survivors in every community can determine what works best for

them

1. Mobile & Latina Advocacy

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Meeting SA and DV survivors where they are – literally @ homes, workplaces, neighborhoods

Offering resources to meet survivor-defined basic needs as bedrock for advocacy

Integrated Programming that Makes Sense from Survivors’ Point of View

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Bilingual/Bicultural Advocacy with Farmworkers Lifetime spectrum of sexual and domestic violence in border crossing, family, relationships, jobs Address on-the-job sexual coercion (“fields of panties”) “Culture 1st,” voice, leadership – integrated into services Methods • Promotora (health promoter) model • Mobile advocacy (fields, warehouses, labor camps) • Community engagement • Systems advocacy (growers, employers) • Network of bilingual/bicultural advocate leaders

Video • (Christopher - show VIDEO excerpt from Alianzas de

Apoyo video; Minute 5:20 – 8:25. This video was created under WSCADV’s Rural grant, and OVW used or uses in OVW Rural new grantee training)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr0H7WQFXwo

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2. Rethinking Shelter Rules DV abusers are rule-makers Purpose of these rules is to subjugate Violence is a tool to enforce rules To repair these harms of abuse, our task is to support: • Trust in oneself • Control over one’s own life • Privacy • Survivor’s relationship with child(ren) • Healing from trauma So do typical rules help or harm?

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Rules that bind In the name of safety, DV shelter rules can unintentionally replicate abusers’ control and undermine recovery from trauma. • Secret location (confidentiality incumbent on advocates,

not service recipients) • Curfew • Zero tolerance, sobriety to obtain housing • No contact with abuser, family, friends • Supervising children at all times • Mandatory services and work (support groups, “goals,”

chores) in order to stay at shelter

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Intention vs. Impact of Shelter Rules Your Values

Your Rules

Your 1st value

Safety

Your 2nd value

Liberation

Your 3rd value

Modeling support and better ways to live

Write out a rule

“Everyone must be inside by 10pm and stay in till 6am”

This rule supports safety because we know where everyone is at night. Otherwise advocates would be worried. When some residents stay out drinking, then nobody feels safe. Advocates have to set alarm system at curfew, before going off-shift.

Curfews for adults undermine their self-determination. How does this rule feel like living with abuser? Residents can’t make their own job hours, some work night shift.

Safety plan on family relationships

Read: “How We Got Rid of Curfew” (WSCADV)

Support residents to create routines that give them security.

Replace alarm system with key cards.

Offer midnight group for survivors with addictions, night terrors.

“Everyone must sign up for a house chore every week. Chores must be completed daily.”

“Children must be with you at all times.”

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Credit: Margaret Hobart, WSCADV

2. Trauma-informed Facility Design

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Shelter is a tough place to be and to parent Communal living in a 1-family house is hard. Doing so in worst crisis of your life + traumatized kids = very hard. So is staffing it.

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Credit: Margaret Hobart, WSCADV

Families need space for quiet, bedtime routines, bonding, sleep, homework

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Typical room: desk too small, no comfy chair, perhaps housing two families

Credit: Margaret Hobart, WSCADV

Trauma-informed bedroom space

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When survivors know that no one will come into their room at night, what can heal?

Survivor-Centered, Trauma-Informed Advocacy Space • Re-think – who stays at shelter is confidential; location

itself is not (Google maps). • Re-decorate – cozy spaces for parent + kid for homework,

quiet spaces + big chairs for bed-time stories, food lockers, mini-fridges, lockers for medication

• Re-model – private bathrooms, re-do kitchens so that multiple families can cook own cultural meals, replace locks with key card system

• Re-build – individual units, scattered sites… or could you

let go of running a shelter?

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3. DV Housing First • 5-year pilot, evidence-informed, 13 pilot sites (rural, Tribal, urban,

culturally-specific) • Survivors retain/access safe, permanent housing quickly—often

bypassing shelter completely.

• Survivors stabilize lives of themselves and their children, in their own home (current or new), in order to begin healing.

• Freedom to choose how best to rebuild their lives.

• Key Service Components • Tailored services, mobile advocacy

• Housing Search Support

• Landlord and Housing Authority Relationships

• Practical, Temporary Financial Assistance

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Evaluation Data

• In Cohort 2, 53% of survivors had permanent housing at program entry, increasing to 86% by January 2013.

• After retaining housing, survivors felt safer and their danger levels decreased.

• People of Color and Native people = 63% of the caseload in Cohort 2.

• “By and for” culturally-specific providers

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Video (Christopher – show video clip from DV Housing First, A Cultural Shift – YWCA of Kitsap County http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lav_qe6m4Nc&index=3&list=PLIyuzxE8fu8Y6ONmmONltMg4vn64WRnDK OR Lifewire: Dignity and Stability for Survivors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr_pyT_C9Xo

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4. Working with Chemically (alcohol/drug) Dependent Survivors oScreening in, not out oUnderstanding links among substance abuse, addiction,

sexual assault, DV o“The intervention is in the asking” oSetting up survivors for success oTrauma-informed oSupport groups, treatment options, alternatives to 12

Steps

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Questions? Comments? Disagreements?

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Thank you! Please DO NOT exit. Once the webinar is closed, a

link will appear directing you to our evaluation. We appreciate your feedback!

This webinar is funded by the Office on Violence Against Women and administered by Transforming Communities: Technical Assistance, Training and Resource

Center in partnership with the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

www.transformcommunities.org www.wscadv2.org