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PROGRAM OVERVIEW
Join
us for our VDAY event on February 21, 2010.
Click here for more (pdf)
The Victims
of Violence (VOV) Program of Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) was
co-founded in 1984 by Mary Harvey, PhD (Director) and Judith
Herman, MD (Director of Training) with startup funding from
the City of Cambridge. Established as a clinical training program
of Harvard Medical School in 1985, VOV received its first Victims
of Crime Act (VOCA) award from the MA Victim Witness Assistance
Board in 1986. In 1988, VOV received the American Psychiatry Association's
Gold Award for innovative hospital and community service.
In 2000, VOCA
funding enabled VOV to launch the Victim Advocacy and Support Team
(VAST) extending hospital-based, alliance-wide victim advocacy and
support to crime victims and their families.
Today, VOV is
a unique clinical resource for victims, a valued training context
for graduate and post-graduate clinical trainees, a setting for
clinical and community research, a consultation and training resource
of national and international significance and a participant in
world-wide anti-violence efforts.
MISSION STATEMENT
AND SERVICE PHILOSOPHY
VOV recognizes
the prevalence and psychological harmfulness of violence in American
society and around the world, the value of community-based social
action to prevent violence, and the importance of competence-building,
empowering care. VOV's mission in the hospital, the CHA health care
network, and the larger community is to develop comprehensive mental
health services for crime victims and crime victimized communities.
Because victims often experience psychiatric intervention as stigmatizing
and intrusive, VOV emphasizes clinical care that can facilitate
mastery, mobilize resiliency and promote renewed hope and restored
self-esteem. Group treatment informed by these themes offers the
promise of reduced isolation, opportunities to form new attachments
and new avenues to community. VAST extends empowering information
and support to crime victims and their families at a time of crisis.
Homicide bereavement services ensure timely, compassionate response
to families devastated by traumatic loss.
VOV SERVICES
- Crisis
intervention and response (initial crisis assessment, treatment
planning and episodic or time-limited crisis-focused psychotherapy)
for acutely traumatized crime victims and their families
- Hospital-based
and system-wide victim advocacy and support
- Longer
term clinical care (psychological assessment, treatment planning
and psychotherapy) for adult survivors of physical and sexual
violence
- A wide
array of groups, (including groups for adult survivors of
childhood abuse and domestic violence and groups for parents,
partners, siblings and children of murdered family members)
- Work within
CHA to promote sensitive and skillful domestic violence prevention,
detection, and response and participate in a wide variety
of training, consultation, and public and professional educational
efforts
VOV FUNDING
VOCA support
for VAST and the Center for Homicide Bereavement are vital to VOV's
ability to extend these free-of-charge services to crime victims
and crime victimized communities. VOCA funding is augmented by matching
funds from CHA.
CHA fully funds
the clinical services of VOV. Other VOV initiatives are supported
by other program resources, including grant and foundation awards,
consultation and training fees and private donations. These sources
of support enable VOV to extend consultation to and conduct specialized
training programs for local, national, and international audiences
and visitors, to conduct research on recovery and resiliency in
trauma survivors, and to participate in community-wide efforts to
address and reduce domestic violence in the City of Cambridge and
surrounding communities.
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Victims
of Violence Program
Central
Street Health Center
26
Central Street
Somerville, MA 02143
617-591-6360
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Barbara
Hamm, PsyD, Director
Judith
L. Herman, MD, Director of Training
Jayme
A. Shorin, LICSW, Associate Dir, Clinical Services
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