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.