According to estimates, one in every six American women has been a victim of sexual violence at least once in their life. Another report suggests that there are over 27 million victims of human trafficking across the world. These victims of various crimes have had their lives turned upside down due as a result to a single event.
However, with the assistance of social service agencies that provide victims with legal, psychological, or financial assistance, these victims of crime have a chance at life. Because of the persistent efforts of victim service organizations that assist law enforcement, perpetrators of these heinous crimes are captured, and their victims are able to reintegrate into society after a traumatic experience.
To know more about the importance of victim services and their crucial role in all communities across the globe, here’s a blog.
What are Victim Services?
Victim Services, as the name implies, is a non-profit organization that assists crime victims. Sexual abuse, domestic violence, assault, battery, and global crimes such as people trafficking are some of the threats that humanity faces all over the world. Victim assistance organizations help victims with mental health, housing, legal representation, job training, and raising awareness about their case.
The Importance of Victim Services
Like all human services, victim services are of utmost importance in the communities they serve. Here are some of the important services offered by agencies in this domain.
Offer Support to Victims
After helping to ensure the safety of a victim, providing support to their client is the victim service case manager's primary duty. This entails offering a victim who comes forward to report a crime psychological, emotional, or moral support.
Assist Victims in Finding Legal Aid
Next up is the crucial task of finding legal aid for victims of crimes. From hiring a lawyer on a pro-bono basis to assisting a victim in filing a complaint, caseworkers have many tasks to complete. In some cases, victim services also help in getting justice for the victims without getting their identities revealed publicly.
Facilitating Victims in Rehabilitation
Victim service caseworkers help their clients reintegrate into society. This is no easy assignment because survivors have been emotionally and physically harmed by violence. Aside from assisting in the search for both mental and medical assistance. They are helping victims in reconstructing their life by assisting with job placement, relocation, and being able to move on.
Awareness and Education
Victim services are also attempting to raise awareness and education about various crimes and dangers. Case managers and the organizations for which they work accomplish this by utilizing the data at their disposal and developing public-service initiatives.
The Part We All Play
The importance of victim services cannot be understated. At GVT we often talk of our "WHY" and a common theme is we are motivated to "help protect our most vulnerable resources." We do this by solving information and workflow challenges with our case management software. However, we don't stop there! We also like to use our platform to raise awareness and you can do the too! Spreading factual information and helping to create awareness is important step towards helping stop this global issue.
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