COMMUNITY EDUCATION & INTERVENTION

Victim Assistance maintains an active role in professional, community and higher education. It actively works with school systems’ crisis teams by consulting and training. Its staff serves as on scene interveners in school crises working with students and staff in the immediate aftermath.

The program has been responsible for development of the upper division/graduate level victim and crisis intervention courses in the Departments of Sociology and Social Work at the University of Akron. It has been instrumental in initiating the Minor and Certificate in Victim Studies that will be a function of those departments. VAP has been directly responsible for increasing the visibility of the victim issues and restorative justice in the criminal justice curricula beginning in the mid 1980’s and continuing across the decades.

Internships from both Social Work and Sociology are an important part of VAP’s role in professional education. Both graduate and undergraduate students obtain supervised experience and credit for their work within the program. Students from both Akron University and Kent State University regularly obtain field placement and internship credit. Other universities also utilize the program, which occasionally includes an international placement.

VAP regularly trains all new Akron Police recruits in crisis intervention and victim legislation. It actively plays a leading role in Grand Rounds education at Akron General Medical Hospital and Emergency Medicine. Since 1975, it has pioneered education for clergy at the local, state and national levels emphasizing the prominent role played by sound spirituality and faith as support systems for survivors.

The program has been an active participant in continuing education for attorneys, social workers and counselors.

Community education is multi-faceted, ranging from scheduled speeches to community groups to the cooperative relationship between the program’s Community Victim Advocate and the COPs program within the Akron Police Department. It extends to the policy and program level within county and municipal boards and committees representing the interests of victims in both child welfare and adult services.

VAP assists schools in building crisis programs, training, and intervention in the aftermath of schools crises, eg., Akron City Schools, Revere Local Schools District, Hudson City Schools and Nordonia Hills City School District. Victim Assistance has intervened with Barberton, Hudson and Tallmadge schools.

In neighborhoods adversely affected by violent crime, VAP staff canvas the homes, apartments and businesses providing information, rumor control, safety information and group crisis interventions. These may range from an apartment house where there has been a homicide, to an entire neighborhood where a highly traumatic incident or series of incidents have taken place.

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