A Journey to Hope and Healing

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To provide nonjudgmental social, informational, and practical support to all crime victims and survivors.

To promote safety, healing, justice, and rights for victims and survivors.

To ensure a voice for victims and survivors through the implementation of victim-centered policies and practices.

To promote access for victims and survivors to a seamless web of multidisciplinary and comprehensive services to meet their needs in the short and long term.

To advocate for individual victims/survivors as well as for social, institutional, and legal change.

Victim United Inc’s Commitment to Working Within Trauma Informed Care Approach

Trauma Informed Approaches improve the psychological and emotional well-being of people accessing or working in Victim United Inc’s services. This is achieved through the trauma informed approaches’ consistent and effective application:  
 

 Safety
Trustworthiness & Transparency
Peer Support
Collaboration & Mutuality
Empowerment, Voice & Choice

Cultural, Historical, & Gender Issues
 

This will be evident in all aspects of Victims United Inc's

• Relationships
• Staff support and training
• The physical environment and social spaces
• A psychological framework
• Evidence generating practice

Building on the strong start and willingness to work within these related and complementary approaches at Victims United Inc, we are pledging to fulfil a commitment to resource and bring these approaches to life consistently and in accessible language across our organization, so as to embed the Trauma Informed Approach deeply and broadly in Victims United Inc's working practices and culture. This includes a clear, written commitment published on the Issachar K Tigre Chinnery Foundation-Victims United Inc website.

“We therefore commit to undertake the following activity to emphasize the comprehensive Approaches in Victim United Inc:

1. Relationships

A) To work within the empowering values and principles of Victim United Inc with each other and with people accessing our services.
 

B) To use positive, affirming language in our communications which confirms, supports, uplifts and empathizes with people.
 

C) To ensure our charity’s services, support and opportunities are accessible and easy to navigate for everyone, including by providing a central point of referral.

D) To adopt a strengths-based approach in our interactions with our staff, colleagues and supported individuals, that is empowering, authentic and respectful. 

2. Staff support and training

A) To take shared responsibility for creating a working environment and culture that promotes and prioritizes care for the health, wellbeing and safety of Victims United Inc’s staff. This in turn will enhance the ability of staff within Victims United Inc, to provide the best possible service to the individuals it supports.

B) To practice this ‘culture of care’ throughout Victims United Inc, with members of the management team and the Board taking particular responsibility to lead by example.

C) To provide a consistent, well-informed and welcoming induction experience for all new starters to Victims United Inc, mirroring the empowering values and principles of Victims United Inc.

D) To commit to a regular program of Trauma Informed training at Victims United Inc, as an integral professional development requirement for all staff at Victims United Inc. 

E) To invest in a professional development program for staff joining Victims United Inc with lived experience, so that they can thrive and progress in the organization. 

3. The physical environment 

A) We commit to providing places of work – our main office and our spaces in communities – that are welcoming, comfortable, accessible and safe. These spaces will contribute positively towards Victims United Inc staff and supported individuals’ sense of identity, worth, dignity and empowerment.  

B) We recognize that the physical environment we provide for staff of Victims United Inc and the individuals Victims United Inc supports has an impact on our attitude and mood; we need to design and maintain supportive and healing environments, particularly to reduce the risk of individuals supported by Victims United Inc re-experiencing traumatization.

C) Design guidelines in Victims United Inc’s workspaces must follow the principles of trauma-informed design, on the use of aesthetics, art, color, furniture, lighting, daylight, plants, spatial layout and visual interest.

D) By committing to this design approach, Victims United Inc will: 

• reduce and remove known adverse stimuli and environmental stressors, 
• provide ways for the individuals we support to demonstrate their ability to do things for themselves, 
• provide and promote   connectedness to the natural world, 
• separate an individual from others who may be in distress, 
• reinforce a sense of personal identity amongst the individuals we support, 
• promote the opportunity for choice, 
• while balancing program needs and the safety & comfort of the majority.

4. A psychological framework

A) We will adopt guiding principles to use as a shared psychological framework, to enable our colleagues to have a shared understanding of, and response to, the people we support. This is an extension of Victims United Inc and will be built around the core principles of safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration and empowerment.

B) We acknowledge that Victims United Inc becoming a trauma-informed organization is a fluid, ongoing process, with no completion date; we will continuously work towards becoming an ever more ‘trauma-informed organization’.

5. Evidence generating practice

A) We will prioritize evaluation approaches that help us to understand our projects’ outcomes, including by adopting a ‘storytelling’ methodology. This will enable staff and supported individuals of Victims United Inc to evaluate their effectiveness, it will support Victims United Inc’s ongoing service development, and it will enable Victim United Inc to evidence the impact of our service.

B) We will adopt and embed reflective practice – for individuals and teams – to support our wellbeing in work and to help ensure the continuity and improvement of our services.

C) We acknowledge that embedding the unique experiences and perspectives of people with lived experience is vital if Victims United Inc’s services are to truly represent the needs of the communities we are here to serve. This includes at a leadership level in Victims United Inc; we appoint a support-led advisory committee that will share its insights directly and regularly to the Board”.