Strategies to Ensure Equitable 
Programming: Understanding the VOCA 
Victim Assistance Rule and Funding 
Opportunities at the State Level 

HEATHER WARNKEN: Hello everyone. Welcome to today's 
webinar entitled Strategies to Ensure Equitable Programming, 
Understanding the VOCA Victim Assistance Rule and Funding 
Opportunities at the State Level. My name is Heather Warnken, 
I'm currently serving as a visiting fellow at the Department of 
Justice, a role I'll tell you a little bit more about as we get started. 

I want to start by sharing a thank you on behalf of the National 
Resource Center for Reaching Victims, both the NRC, and me in 
my capacity as a visiting fellow, are supported by grants awarded 
by the Office of Justice Programs and the Office for Victims of 
Crime, which has made this possible today. 

So now, a little bit more about me as we dive into this content 
and my role in being able to share and engage with you all today. 
So again, I am serving as a visiting fellow at DOJ, and I'm 
working across OVC and the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the 
first ever position designed to improve the dissemination and 
translation of research for the victim assistance fields. Really, the 
bridging the gap between research practice and policy fellowship. 


Prior to that, I was at the Warren Institute on Law and Social 
Policy at UC Berkeley School of Law in a role that really focused 
on similar goals, doing research for the real world, making sure to 
connect these often siloed areas of research policy and practice 
so that the work we do actually can make a difference on the 
ground, and specifically in the lives of survivors that this field is 
hoping to serve. 

So this role was actually launched by Vision 21 which was a 
landmark report that was published by OVC that really was the 
first major assessment of the victims services fields in over 15 
years. How far have we come? How far do we still have to go? 
And Vision 21 issued a series of key findings and 
recommendations, first among them was really the dearth of 
research and evidence to inform this work and a corresponding 
commitment to build up that knowledge base to inform our work. 

Relatedly, what Vision 21 also underscored was the need to move 
beyond these buzz phrases about bridging the gap and put 
concrete action behind that goal. And so I've been honored, for 
the past almost five years now, to be serving in that in-house 
capacity doing just that. 

But what I also want to underscore, before we get started, as it 
really relates to our topic today, is the approach that I've taken to 
that work since day one. And that really, when many people talk 
about translation and dissemination, they often talk about the 


back-end. How do we take data and research and package it in 
more accessible formats and venues so that it's actually at the 
hands of policymakers and practitioners in a way that they can 
apply in their everyday work, rather than stuck behind paywalls 
of academic journals or in overly technical reports that are not of 
any practical use? 

And while that is very important, and we should be doing more of 
that. And I know the NRC has been doing a ton of that, which is 
so helpful and important for the field. What's equally important, if 
not more so, is getting the voices of those directly impacted, 
directly impacted survivors, and frontline service providers at the 
design and decision-making table of what information we collect 
and why. So that we actually produce data and research that's 
asking the relevant questions for this work. And again, both the 
NRC and all the work that it's done and the work that I've done in 
this fellowship has really strive to live and work by those values. 

So in this role, one of the many hats that I've worn is I have, 
again, been honored to work with the NRC since its inception. 
And as many of you know, the Resource Center's goals is to 
better meet the needs of underserved survivors by increasing the 
capacity of service providers to effectively identify, reach, and 
serve underserved survivors in ways that are culturally-
appropriate, linguistically-specific, trauma-responsive, accessible, 
and welcoming, and inclusive. And it has made that possible 


through both separate but deeply connected pillars of that work 
across different categories and populations of underserved 
survivors throughout the field. 

So this has included children, formerly incarcerated, historically 
underserved, LGBTQ, men of color, older adults, people with 
disabilities, people with limited English proficiency, which as you 
can see has been spearheaded by a number of outstanding 
partners and partnerships by some of the leading voices and 
organizations on the frontlines of the direct services work shaping 
the policy and change throughout the field. And within that work, 
there have been expert working groups across these categories 
which I've been honored to serve. Three of them as since their 
inception, including formerly incarcerated, historically 
underserved, and men of color. 

So before we dive in to some of our core content today, I'm going 
to start by laying some critical context, really getting the lay of 
the land here. As many of you probably know, the victim 
assistance field has been going through an unprecedented state 
of growth and change the past few years. So I want to really start 
with some of the fundamentals to get everyone on the same page 
on these critical factors underpinning our topic today. This, I 
think, will best situate us to grapple with some of what I'm going 
to be able to share. So I hope to use our time together to weave 
together some key information across the areas of victim services 


funding, policy, and even what the data tells us about how we're 
doing and how many survivors we're actually reaching. Because 
each of these brings in a central piece of the puzzle of truly 
advancing equitable programming in victim services. 

So to start, what is OVC? As many of you probably know, OVC is 
charged by Congress with administering the Crime Victims Fund. 
Through formula and discretionary grant programs, including the 
ones that made the NRC possible, OVC supports a broad array of 
programs focused on helping survivors in the immediate 
aftermath of crime and as they rebuild their lives. So the CVF is 
intended to ensure stable funding for victim services. And by law, 
amounts not spent or kept in the CVF for victims for future years. 

This and some other factors make it different from other 
appropriations coming out of the office of justice programs. One 
of the key features of this is that the CVF is not taxpayer dollars. 
It's actually fines and fees paid by those convicted in the federal 
criminal justice system. And while it's not our areas of focus 
today, this is also part of, I think, the important context of our 
conversation, both regarding issues of stability around the 
sources of revenue that are actually footing the bill for victim 
services nationwide as criminal justice reform and other factors 
have brought dramatic and long overdue change and a deep 
structural level. But also the ways in which this funding 
mechanism can have implications for who we see and serve as a 


victim of crime in the US and who we do not if, again, the CVF is 
being literally funded by the fines and fees of those convicted in 
the criminal justice system. 

So there have been some major shifts in recent years which, 
again, we're going to talk a little bit more about, but these 
include the significant drop in the current administration in white 
collar prosecutions, for example, which has really declined the 
amount of large fines and fees that have entered the fund and 
really had implications for the balance. This also has implications 
at the state level. So we'll talk a little bit more in the webinar 
about the difference between victim assistance and victim 
compensation. Victim compensation is largely supplemented by 
CVFs at the state level that are fueled by state criminal justice 
system fines and fees, which I've also seen in some jurisdictions, 
some pretty dramatic changes in recent years due to criminal 
justice reform and other factors. So I wanted to put that note out 
there, again, in the spirit of us grappling with the big picture and 
long term trajectory of this work. 

So now, turning to a breakdown of what the funding that I'm 
talking about looks like annually. So since 2000, in response to, 
again, these large fluctuations that happen with the CVF, 
Congress actually placed a cap on the amount of money available 
for annual distribution. And not cap is really intended to maintain 
the CVF as a consistent source of funds for victim services. But 


then in 2015, a sea change. So by lifting the longstanding cap, 
from 2014 and 2015, Congress effectively quadrupled the amount 
of money available for crime victim services through VOCA. 
Jumping from, as you can see, $745 million in 2014 to $1.9 
billion the following fiscal year, and reaching a high of $4.4 billion 
in 2018. And in that year, resulting in awards surpassing every 
other year in the program's 34-year history. 

So even though the funds are currently still in the stratosphere 
compared to where they used to be, we saw the first decrease in 
2019. So that decrease has understandably fed into worries that 
folks have had across the field since this all began, which is, is 
this too good to be true? Will this last? And just kind of growing 
uncertainty around this source of funds in general. 

So where are we now? So as of the past fiscal year, this year 
2020, you can see $2.64 billion, including some of the important 
expenditures that you see there on the screen. So those 
represented at 21% reduction from FY19, which again, was $3.5 
billion, this is still an enormous pot of resources. And part of what 
is so important to understand about this is that the lion's share of 
these funds go to all 56 states and territories, and that all states 
and territories have a tremendous amount of discretion about 
what they do with this money-- to set their own priorities, to 
hopefully innovate, fill gaps in services with the programming 
that they choose to fund. And again, this is all kind of a critical 


foundation for what we'll talk about with the new possibilities for 
what states can do with these funds. 

So I find this visual a really powerful representation of what this 
huge funding boom has really looked like across the country. You 
can see here that the quadrupling of victims assistance funding 
has allowed states to fund more organizations and to provide 
more sub-grants to those organizations than ever before. Again, 
really skyrocketing in the past few years. And this includes both 
an infusion of more funding to programs that have long been 
underfunded and really struggling to meet their mandate and 
serve all the victims that they intend to in their community, but 
also standing up brand new programs that may have been out 
there doing the work for years, maybe decades, but maybe had 
never received VOCA before, or to launch brand new innovative 
programs from the ground up. And you can see in those numbers 
that really all of the above across the country has taken place. 

So again, even though the majority of this money, 90% of these 
funds are awarded to states and territories each year through 
these formula grants, there is also much smaller in amount but 
still significant part of the funds that go toward discretionary 
programming, that is administered directly at the federal level, 
that also plays an important role in informing OVC and the nation, 
including the state administering agencies that make the 
decisions about the state funds regarding innovation and what's 


possible through influencers of the field. And I think a perfect 
example of this is the National Resource Center. The NRC was 
one of the biggest such discretionary programs in OVC's history 
and has been a game-changer across the field, providing 
technical assistance and resources and support to programs 
throughout the country, again, based at their led in strong 
partnership with those partner agencies and a vast network of 
experts and other service providers who have not only taken a 
hands-on role but collaborated, I think, in new ways. 

So another important note that we're going to kind of touch on 
before proceeding as an important clarification is really making 
sure that we understand the difference between VOCA assistance 
and VOCA victim compensation because, again, there can be 
widespread confusion and misperceptions out there about how 
these relate and where the money actually goes. So as you can 
see here, VOCA victim assistance, this is awarded through the 
state administering agencies as sub-grants to state agencies, 
community-based organizations, and other local service providers 
grants that support direct services for victims. That these 
agencies, CVOs, others get awarded the funds and then they are 
out on the frontlines doing the direct service work. 

This differs from VOCA victim compensation, which are grants 
awarded to support reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses 
that victims may have resulting from being the victim of a crime. 


And again, as I mentioned earlier, victim compensation is largely 
supplemented by crime victims funds at the state and local level, 
which in addition to criminal justice system fines and fees, may 
include other revenue sources that literally make possibilities out-
of-pocket expense reimbursement payments to victims. Part of 
why it's so important to understand the difference between these 
two is that oftentimes there are more explicit prohibitions or 
requirements related to how victim compensation payments can 
be made and to whom that don't apply to direct service programs 
funded through the victim assistance awards. 

And part of the problem with misconceptions around that is in 
ways that victim compensation may be highly restrictive in 
certain instances, it can be harmful if there's assumptions that 
the possibilities of what to do with the direct service money from 
victim assistance formula programs might be similarly 
constrained. And oftentimes, they're not. And so I really want to 
draw attention to the fact that these are different before we start 
getting even further into what some of the new possibilities 
around the victim assistance side are, to really open our minds in 
thinking about what's possible, especially when victims and 
survivors and communities face so many barriers, and among 
them might be barriers to accessing victim compensation. 

Another reason it's important to draw attention to this difference 
is there's quite a difference in the amount of funds and where the 


money actually goes. So you can see that just using the last two 
fiscal years, how this breaks down. And drawing attention to 
2019, that the awards overall totaled more than $2.39 billion, but 
only $139 million of that went to the compensation formula 
grants, whereas $2.25 billion went to all states and territories for 
their victim assistance programs that, again, make the grants for 
community-based organizations, state agencies, and others to do 
direct service work. 

So further kind of adding and enriching this picture. So I'm going 
to share a little bit more about what the data tells us, about 
what's going on across the victim services landscape. And in 
particular, share with you some key findings about what we know 
about these questions from a report that I published in 2019 
during National Crime Victims Rights Week, Who Experiences 
Violent Victimization and Who Accesses Services? So this was co-
authored with the brilliant professor Janet Lauritsen from the 
University of Missouri-St. Louis. And our collaboration in bringing 
this report to life was really seeking to emulate that approach to 
bridge-building I was talking about earlier. 

So her is one of the nation's true data experts on the NCVS 
combined with my focus on what are the policy and practice 
implications about what these data tell us, really allowed us to 
team up to do things with this analysis that in some cases had 
never been done before. So this included being able to present 


widely available findings that you won't find in the annual 
publications from DOJ and the Bureau of Justice statistics, which 
tend to focus on singular factors such as crime type, age, race, 
whereas we really sought to take an intersectional approach and 
look at multiple factors at once, more reflective of people's lived 
experiences and perhaps more aligned with the questions that 
service providers might have in the victim services field. 

We also chose to write it for diverse audiences and make it widely 
available on the Center for Victim Research website sister center 
to the NRC, again, rather than behind a paywall or stuck in an 
overly technical, inaccessible journal article where other place 
that direct service practitioners aren't always looking for their up-
to-date information to help inform their work. We are currently 
working on an update to this report so I'd love to hear from 
anyone about ways to make that most useful to you and your 
communities. 

So before getting to the specific findings themselves, again, a 
little bit more background so that we can really help put them in 
context. So just as important as what the numbers actually say, I 
was getting very clear at the outset about what the data source is 
actually reflecting, and what it's not. So the National Crime 
Victimizations Survey is widely cited including as one of the main 
measurements of the crime rate in the US. And one of the 
unparalleled strengths of NCVS is that unlike other main sources 


of crime data including the FBI's uniform crime reports and other 
sources of law enforcement data, the NCVS is capable of what we 
call-- capable of measuring what we call the dark figure of crime, 
that which goes unreported to police. And that's clearly a critical 
area and line of inquiry for our work, knowing that such a 
significant percentage of victimization and survivors in our 
communities for many reasons do not want to work or choose not 
to report to law enforcement. 

Another strength includes its large sample size and participation 
rates, but there are also some important limitations to note. One, 
it's what I'm going to share with you, is for those aged 12 and 
older. It also does not include homicide, which is an important 
topic, of course, for the field. Also, as a household survey 
conducted by the Census Bureau or in partnership with the 
Bureau of Justice statistics, it does not include the voices of many 
of our most vulnerable victims, including those who are 
homeless, transient, in and out of the justice system, and other 
institutional settings. And part of why it's so important to 
highlight that is that this might reflect what is the tip of the 
iceberg in some cases. That, again, if what I'm sharing is a 
household survey, that doesn't include some of those vulnerable 
categories. The true access issues and takeaways might go much 
deeper. 


So with that, we'll dive in to some of those key findings. So you 
can see that according to the NCVS, only 9.6% of victims of 
serious violence overall report access to services in the most 
recent period that we analyzed. And that this really hadn't moved 
much at all since these questions were added to the NCVS in 
1993. Now, that's a pretty staggering finding that only less than 
10% of victims are reporting getting the help that we intend for 
them. And the fact that after decades of growth and change and 
expansion and an infusion of a huge amount of money to 
standing up these services, no one really asks some deep and 
hard questions of the fields about how far we still have to go and 
why such significant barriers remain. 

Part of what has taken place in the decades since the passage of 
VOCA in 1984, since the Victims of Crime Act, there have been a 
proliferation of approximately 32,000 laws and policies, 
commitments made to victims on paper of guaranteeing the 
rights and the services that we hope that in the aftermath of their 
harm that they have access to. And yet, the findings do not align 
with those promises. You can see also that for some of the higher 
risk categories, including youth victims, that the numbers vary a 
little bit and are even lower than that overall average for those 
age 18 to 34 who experience some of the highest rates of 
violence. You can also see that 42% of victims of serious violence 
overall choose not to report that serious violent victimization to 
the police. 


Also important to make sure we're on the same page with is that 
this is not all victims of crime. Again, this is specifically analyzing 
victims of serious violence to find in NCVS as victimization that 
include attempted and completed rape, and sexual assault, 
robbery, aggravated assault, which in the NCVS is assault 
involving a weapon or resulting in serious bodily injury. So 
furthering our discussion of key findings, who is most likely to 
become a victim based on race and ethnicity differences? So as 
you can see, blacks' risk for serious violence have remained 1.5 
to two times greater than whites. And again, it's important to 
note that homicide is not included in the NCVS. And that black 
people in the US accounted for 13% of the population, yet 51% 
of all homicides. And for young black men, homicide is the first 
leading cause of death causing more deaths than the entire other 
top nine causes combined. So again, I want us to really read and 
grapple with these findings in a way that puts them in context 
and sometimes doesn't even see just the full, picture, and 
sometimes might even be the tip of the iceberg. 

Non-Hispanic American Indians, 2.4 times 140% greater than 
whites. And part of why this is so significant is that, again, these 
are not always findings that you can see in the annual released 
reports of these data. And part of the reason why is that similar 
trends aren't produced individually for certain race and ethnicity 
categories when the sample sizes are deemed small and therefore 
less reliable. However, by combining multiple years of the data, 


these challenges are greatly minimized and the findings can be 
produced. And when you do, again, the results are critically 
important for understanding disparities in our work. 

Persons who report multiple race backgrounds, 4.1 times or 
310% greater than risk of whites. This, again, is a powerful 
example of how data can make whole populations invisible or can 
play a role in shedding light on issues and groups too often 
forgotten or other eyes, that it's only been possible to do this last 
piece of analysis on multiracial groups more recently, since this 
option allowing people to choose to report more than one 
category that they self-identify as race in the year 2000 when 
that question, that possibility was added in the census. And 
again, from that analysis, from 2000 moving forward, it revealed 
some of the highest risks by far. 

And as we talked about earlier, looking at singular categories 
really only takes us that so far. So an intersectional approach is 
really critical to understanding the meaning of these patterns and 
more reflective of the many facets affecting people's lives. And 
when we look at risk on a continuum, from highest to lowest 
across the categories, we see that black males under the age of 
35 who live in urban households with incomes under 25,000 have 
a risk for serious violent victimization nearly 15 times greater 
than that of females age 55 or older living in non-urban 
households with incomes of 75,000 or more. And notwithstanding 


a reality like this, which again doesn't even include the 
experience of many of the most vulnerable survivors who are not 
eligible to participate in NCVS, we can then take a comparative 
look, for example, at our VOCA expenditures. And we can see 
from a high level, for instance, that the vocal performance 
measurement data on this formula grants we've been talking 
about show that over 71% of assistance dollars go toward serving 
females, the majority to whites, and by a wide margin to the 29 
to 59 age group, the category determined by OVC. 

So this breaks down with a little more nuance who's most likely 
to use services. And you can see there's some significant 
differences, both across males and females. Currently, we don't 
have the same findings available as sexual orientation. Gender 
identity questions were only added much more recently in 2016. 
But also, some significant differences across different crime types 
that are worth noting and grappling with for the way we approach 
services across the field. 

So again, kind of returning to one of the core strengths of NCVS 
that it's actually capable of looking at victimization not on the 
radar of the criminal justice system, not reported to police, you 
can see that there's also some significant differences about the 
connection between reporting and access to services. So 
theoretically, we see that it's good news that there is a 
correlation that a higher percentage of victims get access to 


services when they engage in reporting. And I think that gets 
more attention when it comes to this result. But there's a lesser 
discussed, but kind of equally important takeaway here, which is 
what happened to the 87% of victims who report their 
victimization and did not get access to services? What happens to 
the huge percentage of victims who choose not to report who 
face lower rates of getting the help that they need? 

Again, this is important jumping off point for so many related 
questions that we have across the field. Similarly, the NCVS 
allows us to look at the connection between medical care and 
access to victim services. You can see that 36% of victims of 
serious violence suffered bodily injury and that 56% of those 
victims report receiving medical care for those injuries. So again, 
it's theoretically good news that victims were more likely to 
access services when they received medical care. However, even 
in those instances, it's only 16%. 

So with that rich background and kind of deep foundation that I 
hope is helpful for launching into the new victim services rule, I'm 
going to talk more about the significant policy change that took 
place in 2016. So the VOCA rule change allows states more 
flexibility with what they do with that funding we've been 
discussing, to innovate and tailor programming. It is set up to 
really expand the types of services that states can fund with their 
VOCA victim assistance dollars. Provides states the opportunity to 


address gaps in services such as those identified in the Vision 21 
report I talked about at the opening of the webinar today. 

So some highlights of what this actually made possible. Again, 
this was released in 2016 which even though we've got a few 
years under our belts in policy timelines from understanding and 
getting the word out across the country from the state agencies 
themselves and the stakeholders in their communities, we still 
call this the new rule because we're still very much on that 
process of education and having this take hold. So highlights, 
much greater flexibility around some key areas for serving 
victims, including mental health counseling and care, transitional 
housing, relocation, substance use treatment, civil legal aid, 
forensic interviews. And then perhaps one of the biggest sea 
changes of all, the 2016 rule change removed a decades-long 
prohibition in VOCA in using the money to serve victims who were 
incarcerated. 

So even though the fine print only opened the door for serving 
incarcerated survivors, I think the implications of this just run so 
much deeper, given the fact that that dichotomy had been drawn 
within the initial VOCA of 1984, that really creating that kind of 
false dichotomy between who are victims and survivors and who 
are those in the criminal justice system, and whether or not they 
were incarcerated, and the way that that has created perceptions 
about which programs states choose to fund and focus on in this 


work. So again, I can't underscore enough the fact that removing 
this prohibition created not only huge possibilities in what kind of 
programs and services get funded moving forward, but really in 
shifting the narrative in who we're talking about and bringing a 
much more holistic trauma informed lens. 

Similarly, created greater flexibility on using the funds for 
restorative justice, multi-system inter-agency, multidisciplinary 
response. Now, these have been around as buzz phrases since 
the '90s but to do victim assistance work in survivor informed 
collaborative ways across systems, across disciplines, actually 
takes funds and coordination and planning. And so the rule 
change making clear that VOCA dollars can be used to support 
those sorts of activities is huge. 

Exposure to violence as a direct form of victimization, again just 
aligning much more with the research and the way that our 
understanding of trauma and victimization has evolved in the 
decades since VOCA was passed. Technology and innovation, 
greater flexibility around evaluation of sub-recipient programs 
and more. Those are really just highlights, and I've included in 
the resources for this webinar the link so you can really dig 
deeper including a side-by-side comparison chart that really 
walks through these changes compared to the former guidelines 
so you can really get into the fine print and see for yourselves 


what the relevance and possibilities of some of these changes 
really are. 

So again, it's important to stress before we move on that this rule 
change was permissive, not mandatory. So in other words, it 
didn't require states moving forward to do these things with their 
annual funds. It created an invitation, an opportunity to do these 
things, to think more holistically about services, to fund programs 
across these areas that they may be never funded before. And as 
we've seen, since the rule change was released in 2016 to date, 
there really has been a justice by geography and really some 
significant differences across the 56 states and territories what 
they've done with that invitation and how they've done it. 

It's been fully within the state's purview to keep doing things as 
they've always done, and fund the same programs that they've 
funded for years, sometimes decades. Some have taken a mix, 
some have done needs assessments and really tried to pause and 
pump the brakes to understand what's going on in their state, in 
their communities before deciding to do new things with their 
funds. And so this has been an ongoing dialogue, happening in 
real time, and that's part of why this webinar and other efforts 
are really intending to make sure that not just the agencies that 
make the decisions around the funding, but those in the 
communities most impacted by those decisions, that those 
service providers with frontline expertise to inform what these 


possibilities mean for filling gaps actually have a seat at the table 
and can actually hold the decision makers with these new tools in 
their hands accountable to really realizing the intended benefits 
and possibilities of the rule change. 

So a quick note before we move on again on kind of the 
background and further tools to inform this dialogue about what 
we do with the possibilities I've talked about today, this first ever 
victim services statistical research program. So we talked a lot 
about the NCVS, that's the data that we have directly speaking to 
the experiences of victims. What we've never had in the US, 
certainly not at the level, are data directly from the perspective of 
providers on the frontlines trying to meet their needs. And so the 
Victim Services Statistical Research Program launched on the 
same timeline as much of what we've talked about today were 
efforts to do just that. And they started with the first ever 
national census and survey of victim service providers which even 
in its initial phases have really demonstrated some compelling 
things about the current state of the field and the direction that it 
may be moving in in the years to come. 

So this first ever publication using the national census of victim 
service providers data, which came out in, as you can see, 
November of 2019, also included the release of the raw data 
underlying this report, which means that anyone out there, 
researchers or otherwise, have the ability to do deeper analysis 


for themselves looking at segments of their community and their 
state about what this research thus far has found. And the 
National Census of Victim Service Providers included in its frame 
approximately 12,000 providers nationwide. And with this new 
data, is the ability to analyze what the makeup of the field looks 
like in your individual state and community. 

And as you can see, even though this first step of this long-term 
work is incredibly high level, already some strong takeaways 
about what we're currently funding and supporting as victims 
services work, and what the possibilities are to greater diversify 
those services. So as you can see, most are based in nonprofits 
and government entities, which is unsurprising. Although, you 
can see heavily focused in the criminal justice system. You can 
also see for example that only 2.9% of these approximately 
12,000 providers nationwide were self-reporting to be based in 
hospitals, medical, or emergency facilities. So again, I think some 
important food for thought about partnerships in the public health 
sphere, about shifting narratives around even the terms we used 
around victim and survivor, and what does it mean to respond to 
harm, and who are the relevant partners and entities that we 
need to be considering and funding as part of that work. 

So I'm going to end by shifting, again, taking it local to some 
state strategies and takeaways for us to think about moving 
forward. So I hope what's been clear from this conversation is the 


importance of relationship building with these decision-makers, 
with the VOCA administrators in all 56 states and territories. This 
is really critical for fostering collaboration, transparency, and 
access to these significant funding opportunities that have only 
gotten far more significant as the funds have skyrocketed in 
recent years. 

I hope I've rounded out the picture by really asking some hard 
questions given what we know from the data and otherwise what 
are the needed policy practice and funding changes so that we're 
actually reaching and supporting all victims, especially those who 
have traditionally been most harmed, least helped. And again, 
the importance of holding the state administering agencies 
accountable in utilizing these new tools. The rule change, the 
funds, and doing so in a way that's truly collaborative. That 
through the strategic planning, and the funding decisions they 
make, that hopefully are striving to be equitable to reaching all 
victims and survivors in their communities, that we're only going 
to get there if we honor the expertise of frontline service 
providers, community members, and directly-impacted survivors 
at the decision-making tables of not only the funding but the data 
we collect to inform those decisions and ultimately what service 
programs we pursue. That we do all of this in a way that 
establishes durable frameworks for assessing need and 
identifying who are underserved that's not subject to the 
changing funding and policy wins of the day. 


And from the data that I've shared, the findings, the rule change, 
the funding, much of what we've talked about is just scratching 
the surface. Especially on the range of factors impacting people's 
lives and the various forms of violence and harm, that people 
endure and that they endure disproportionately in our society. So 
to truly move the needle in victim services, and again, this is just 
so at the heart of what the NRC has done in the years since its 
inception, we need to think differently and more holistically about 
harm and victimization. And as James Baldwin said, "not 
everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be 
changed until it is faced." And the stark reality and disparities 
that we've talked about today, I think really call on all of us to 
think deeply about our roles, not only as victims service providers 
and partners in this work, but really as members of this society 
that is still plagued by such significant disparities and all the work 
that we still have ahead. 

And with that, again, I wanted to make sure to leave you with a 
number of resources so that you can dig deeper, so that you can 
follow up, and be a part of this conversation in your states. This 
includes the text of the rule change itself, the side-by-side 
comparison chart I mentioned that I think is invaluable in 
navigating and deciphering what these changes really mean and 
how to be an advocate for these possibilities. The directory of 
who these decision-makers are across all 56 states and 
territories. The report we talked about with these findings who 


experiences violent victimization and who is accessing services 
currently. The first ever publications and some related webinars 
on the new Victim Services Statistical Research Program, again 
which I hope are helpful tools to guide these conversations and to 
advocate for change in addressing gaps across the country. 

And with that, I hope that everybody knows that they should 
please consider me a resource moving forward. Please reach out 
with questions, comments to further the discussion to make this 
information useful and meaningful in your lives and work. I am 
available and welcoming of that moving forward. And with that, 
there is my contact information. Please do reach out any time 
and I'm appreciative for your time today. Thanks so much.