PROGRAM OVERVIEW

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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.