Tips for Helping Trauma Survivors During COVID-19

During a public health crisis, the survivors you serve need your support even more. COVID-19 is an uncontrollable threat and is raising fear and anxiety. As advocates, you can help survivors manage these fears and help them cope with the added anxiety this crisis brings up. To help you help survivors, we’ve developed a few infographics and a compilation of tips that survivors may find useful. We’ve written these with the survivor as the audience. Feel free to distribute these infographics and utilize the tip sheet as needed. You cut and paste these tips into emails, text, and message apps. You can also use these to create your own fact sheets.

• Helping Survivors Cope During COVID-19: Tip sheet for advocates to help survivors cope with the fear and anxiety of COVID-19.

• Healthcare Guide During a Crisis: Survivors of violence, especially those who’ve survived child sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, or sexual assault, can find visiting the doctor or going to a health clinic really challenging. The chaos of waiting areas, emergency rooms and the vulnerability of being sick can combine to make these experiences anxiety producing and triggering. There are steps survivors can take to make accessing healthcare a little easier. This guide is to help survivors prepare should they need care due to COVID-19.

• Recommendations for Self Care: Self-care Infographic for advocates helping survivors during the COVID-19 health crisis.

• Grounding Techniques: Infographic on grounding techniques for advocates helping survivors experiencing fear and anxiety during the COVID-19 crisis.

Listening Session Recording

Adapting and Sustaining Services for Formerly Incarcerated Survivors During COVID-19: A Panel Discussion

Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people are at high risk for contracting the coronavirus and often have little or no access to reliable and consistent health care services. The health risks—coupled with the challenge of practicing social distancing in jails and prisons—have led correctional facilities around the country, particularly local jails, to accelerate releases. In many cases, however, people are returning home to the challenging, new reality of life during a global pandemic with very little access to the supportive services they might normally get during their reentry period (e.g., assistance with housing, employment, and transportation). Accessing healing services—often difficult under normal circumstances—appears to be even more challenging, as most providers have shifted to remote service provision, and not all survivors have access to reliable technology to avail themselves of remote services.

This panel discussion is about the emerging and enduring needs of formerly incarcerated survivors and how some service providers are adapting their services to meet those needs.

Panelists:

• Leon EL-Alamin from the M.A.D.E. Institute in Flint, Michigan
• Angel Tomeo Sam from The Bail Project in Spokane, Washington
• Colleen Smith from Newark Community Solutions in New Jersey

Webinar Recording

COVID-19 Impact Briefs

The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims conducted a series of listening sessions to unearth the impact the COVID-19 health crisis is having on underserved victims of crime and better resource the crime victim services field to respond to those needs. From these listening sessions, the National Resource Center and our Partners created a series of COVID-19 Survivor Impact Briefs that summarize the issues and strategies that emerged.

COVID-19

Boys and Men of Color COVID-19 Listening Session

While everyone is impacted by the COVID-19 public health crisis, the impact is far greater on people from underserved communities: older adults, people with disabilities, communities of color and so many more. Prior to COVID-19, these communities were already underserved by victim services despite experiencing higher rates of victimization. These same communities have access to fewer resources, which compounds the challenges they already face and the new challenges created by COVID-19.

To ensure these survivors from underserved communities are at the center of all COVID-19 response efforts, we need to better understand the impact this health crisis is having on survivors’ needs and better resource the crime victim services field to respond to their needs. We hosted a series of listening sessions designed to surface the unique challenges facing survivors from specific underserved communities and to identify solutions. We believe that the collective wisdom and creative-problem solving within our field is needed now more than ever. We invite you to view the recordings and access the resources shared.

Listening Session Recording