Help for Providers
Training & Technical Assistance
The Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center (OVC TTAC) provides comprehensive training, technical assistance, and other support to assist the field in building its collective capacity to serve crime victims.
Instructor-led Trainings
- The OVC Training Schedule brings practical skill-building sessions to victim service providers throughout the country. CEUs are offered for full participation and completion of all requirements for select trainings.
Training by Request
- OVC now offers Training by Request as another option for program leaders who wish to organize a specific training for their own region. OVC TTAC will provide instructors, an onsite coordinator, all training materials for the instructors, and a Participant Manual for each participant at no cost to you or to the participants.
National Victim Assistance Academy
- The National Victim Assistance Academy (NVAA) is an education and training classroom experience for professionals and volunteers who assist victims and survivors of crime. The NVAA includes three instructional tracks: Track 1, Foundation-Level Training, Track 2, Professional Skill-Building Institute, and Track 3, Leadership Institute. CEUs are offered for full participation and completion of all NVAA requirements.
Online Trainings
Back to Top
Instructor Materials
- Sexual Assault Advocate/Counselor Training is a course designed to teach advocates how to provide competent, effective crisis intervention services to victims and survivors of sexual assault.
- Victim Impact: Listen and Learn uses a victim-centered approach that is designed to help facilitators in their efforts to make offenders more aware of the impact that crime has on victims, to take responsibility for their actions, and begin to make amends.
- Ethics in Victim Services is designed to provide information and skills related to ethical standards in victim services and ethical decisionmaking.
- NVAA Foundation-Level Training Curriculum is available to victim service providers and allied professionals to download for their use. These materials have been peer reviewed and pilot tested, and they are continually being refined and updated for future NVAAs.
- Supporting Crime Victims With Disabilities focuses on recognizing and addressing these challenges so that all victims with disabilities receive the necessary support and assistance. This OVC instructor-led training is also available in Spanish.
Conference Support Programs
Effective May 31, 2012, OVC has cancelled the national and state conference support programs due to the challenging nature of supporting non-DOJ conferences while complying with the mandatory DOJ conference guidelines and pre-approval process. If your application has already been received by OVC TTAC, it will be processed. If you have any questions, please contact OVC TTAC at 1-866-682-8822 or
ttac@ovcttac.org.
Scholarship Programs
- The Professional Development Scholarship Program provides support for victim service professionals to attend trainings and conferences that will enhance their ability to work with victims of crime. The program provides up to $1,000 for individuals and up to $5,000 for multidisciplinary teams of victim service professionals seeking continuing education opportunities.
- The Crime Victim/Survivor Scholarship Program provides eligible agencies and organizations sponsoring state conferences that focus on enhancing victim services with funds to offer scholarships that help eligible victims/survivors attend their conference.
National Training and Technical Assistance Needs Assessment Survey
Back to Top
Training and Technical Assistance
- OVC TTAC offers specialized training and technical assistance (TTA) to meet your organization’s needs. All TTA is designed to help build capacity and improve the quality of services offered to crime victims.
Technical Assistance Guides
-
Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force Strategy and Operations e-Guide
The Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force Strategy and Operations e-Guide, developed by OVC and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, is a resource for both established and new Task Forces that provides—
- Direction and development to form new anti-human trafficking Task Forces.
- Ideas to strengthen existing anti-human trafficking Task Forces.
- Creative strategies, examples, and lessons learned from existing Task Forces.
- Links to valued tools, trainings, and resources.
- Conducting a Needs Assessment
This guide provides assistance with conducting a comprehensive needs assessment of your community, targeting populations, and the services available to them. It also serves as a guide in using the results of needs assessments to further develop, refine, and implement programs.
- Hiring a Local Evaluator
This guide contains useful tips on what to consider in the decision-making and selection processes of hiring a local evaluator.
- Performance Measurement & Program Evaluation
This guide to performance measurement and evaluation provides information on preparing goals and objectives, identifying performance measures and program outcomes, identifying evaluation questions, creating a program planning or logic model, selecting evaluation design, deciding on data collection methods, analyzing and presenting data, and using evaluation data.
- Protecting Human Subjects
This guide provides basic information about the federal regulations that protect the privacy and confidentiality of persons involved in research (i.e., human subjects), and explains how they pertain to needs assessment and/or program evaluation.
Consultant Network
- OVC TTAC supports capacity-building needs of organizations serving victims of crime. To do this, we are always looking for highly skilled professionals who are effective educators of adults and able to share their expertise with service providers. The availability of a skilled, high quality, and diverse consultant network is critical to OVC TTAC’s success in managing training and technical assistance resources designated to support OVC programs, projects, and activities. Apply now to become a consultant!
Join the OVC TTAC listserv to receive notifications of future training events and announcements.
Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center
9300 Lee Highway Fairfax, VA 22031-6050
Phone: 1-866-OVC-TTAC (1-866-682-8822) | TTY: 1-866-682-8880
Fax: 703-225-2338
E-mail: TTAC@ovcttac.org
Web site: www.ovcttac.gov
Back to Top
Training by Grantees
Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International, with funding from OVC, developed four, free online training modules that cover terminology, drugs, consent, evidence collection, and the laboratory process related to victim-centered care in drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) cases. Each module is designed for individuals experienced in sexual assault investigations, including Sexual Assault Response Teams (SARTs), Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANEs), and Sexual Assault Forensic Examiners (SAFEs).
- Modules 1 and 2—An Overview of DFSA SANE/SAFE/SART Protocol I & II—examine best practices in victim-centered care, establish a common language regarding DFSA among SART members, and document proper evidence-collection techniques for DFSA cases.
- Module 3—Challenges in DFSA Investigations—includes strategies in evidence collection and laboratory testing, and recommendations for medical professionals, investigators, prosecutors, and toxicologists to effectively investigate DFSA cases.
- Module 4—Drug Facts: a DFSA Perspective—includes terminology, drugs, reporting the crime, evidence collection, laboratory methodologies and recommendations for effective investigations of DFSA cases.
More information about each of the modules, including presenters, course requirements, and accreditation, are available on RTI International’s Forensic Education Web site.
Through funding from OVC and BJA, the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) is responding to mortgage fraud, a fast-growing financial crime in the United States, by providing—
- training and technical assistance,
- downloadable resources for mortgage fraud victims and potential homebuyers,
- tools to develop recovery plans for mortgage fraud victims, and
- tips and resources to reduce the risk of becoming the next victim of mortgage fraud.
Visit the NCPC Mortgage Fraud Web page on a regular basis to stay up-to-date on available trainings, such as webinars, and tools and resources to help assist victims of mortgage fraud.
