24-Hour Advanced Victim Advocate Training - (In Person)

24-Hour Advanced Victim Advocate Modules and Training Objectives

Day 1: 

1. Setting the Stage: Why Are We Here?

• Establish shared group agreements and participation expectations that support safety, respect, and engagement.
• Describe the purpose, scope, and learning goals of the training, connecting them to participants’ roles and experiences.
• Review the training structure, schedule, and logistics, including daily flow, breaks, accessibility supports, and housekeeping details.

2. Advanced Communication: Conflict, Boundaries, and Repair

• Recognize when situations are increasing in tension, requiring complex communication resolution skills.
• Apply trauma-informed communication strategies to high-emotion, challenging conversations.
• Use communication repair strategies following miscommunication or harm.

3. Holding Trauma with Care: Neurobiology, Systems, and Survivor-Centered Advocacy

• Analyze the neurobiological impacts of chronic, complex, and intergenerational trauma across diverse experiences.
• Reframe trauma-related behaviors as adaptive survival responses, recognizing their role in safety, coping, and decision-making.
• Assess how trauma influences victim/survivor safety, trust, connection, and decision-making, and integrate this understanding into trauma-informed, survivor-centered advocacy approaches.

4. Care That Connects: Walking WITH Survivors

• Adapt trauma-informed, survivor-centered advocacy approaches to account for cultural context, neurodiversity, accessibility, and other unique needs.
• Assess and prioritize intersectional survivor needs across victimization types to inform advocacy decisions.
• Integrate harm-reduction strategies and survivor-defined goals into advocacy planning.

Day 2: 

5. Lethality, Risk Assessment, and Strangulation

• Analyze key lethality indicators in intimate partner violence (IPV).
• Differentiate between visible and non-visible signs of strangulation and articulate associated medical risks.
• Demonstrate trauma-informed screening and response strategies.
• Assess immediate risk and determine urgency of response, including when to prioritize medical care, documentation, and cross-system referrals.
• Identify how risk assessment informs (but does not replace) survivor-driven safety planning across stages.

6. Advanced Safety Planning and Suicide Prevention: Responding to Complex High-Risk Situations

• Apply lethality and risk assessment concepts to develop adaptive, high-risk safety plans across diverse situations.
• Analyze and respond to changing safety needs—including suicide risk—using trauma-informed, non-clinical approaches.
• Design survivor-centered safety strategies that account for cultural context, accessibility, and systemic barriers.

7. Recognizing and Preventing Institutional Harm Through Systems Advocacy

• Analyze systems advocacy and the direct impact on survivors.
• Identify patterns of institutional harm that decrease survivor autonomy and access to support.
• Apply best practices and practical approaches to identify and address institutional barriers within their own systems.

Day 3: 

8. Multidisciplinary Collaboration, Team Debriefing, and Coordinated Responses

• Demonstrate strategies for effective multidisciplinary collaboration across systems and within internal prosecution teams.
• Analyze and navigate power dynamics while maintaining survivor-centered advocacy principles.
• Identify and apply strategies to reduce system fragmentation and strengthen coordinated responses.
• Practice team debriefing best practices that support trauma-informed case management.

9. Strategic Ethical Decision-Making in Complex Advocacy Systems

• Analyze complex ethical dilemmas involving confidentiality, mandated reporting, and survivor safety.
• Evaluate competing priorities, including autonomy, safety, cultural responsiveness, and institutional policy, to determine and justify ethically sound courses of action.
• Apply structured ethical decision-making frameworks to develop and implement appropriate responses to real-world, cross-system advocacy challenges.

10. Trauma-Informed Leadership, Supervision, and Sustainability in Advocacy

• Analyze and apply trauma-informed leadership and supervision practices within organizational and multidisciplinary contexts to strengthen survivor-centered outcomes.
• Assess and respond to the impact of burnout, vicarious trauma, and moral distress by developing strategies that support individual and team sustainability.
• Design and implement sustainable, equity-centered organizational practices that enhance resilience and long-term effectiveness in advocacy programs.