Direct Services
The Center for Victim & Survivor Services’ (CVSS) mission is to promote safety, healing, and justice for victims and survivors of crime by meeting their individualized needs, upholding victims’ rights, and enhancing community and national responses to harm. We achieve our mission by building programs that focus on direct services, consultation, training, collaborative partnerships, and developing innovative solutions to meet the needs of individuals who experience crime.
We offer survivor-centered services that help people who have been harmed find support and move forward. We use our expertise to provide practical, evidence-based guidance, and we build strong partnerships to improve how communities respond and work together. We focus on education—for service providers, law enforcement, the public, and ourselves—to strengthen support for survivors. And we advocate for national systems change that centers survivors’ voices and improves their experiences, both within the justice system and beyond.
Programs
Hotline Programs
The Center for Victim & Survivor Services’ has operated two hotlines since 2015, VictimConnect Resource Center and the DC Victim Hotline. Both programs provide 24/7 phone, chat, and text-based services to all victims of crime. Visitors to the hotline can receive strength-based and trauma-informed services and referrals in over 200 languages.
NCVC’s victim assistance specialists receive extensive training and mentoring to provide emotional support, information, and referrals with a goal of empowering visitors as they navigate the physical, emotional, legal, and financial consequences of crime.
The National Hotline Consortium
The National Hotline Consortium is led by the NCVC’s Center for Victim & Survivor Services. It was formed in 2015 by a group of leading national victim services and crisis intervention hotlines seeking to work collectively to provide accessible high-quality survivor-centered services that are trauma- and culturally informed.
Services for Organizations
Direct Services
In addition the hotline programs listed above, CVSS leverages hotline knowledge and infrastructure to support smaller organizations provide week-day or 24/7 hotline services, intakes, or dispatch.
Additionally, CVSS can help jurisdictions craft hotline services based on their individualized needs. Direct Service programs can also include short-term follow-up services and emergency assistance funds for specific survivor populations.
Consultation & Training
CVSS provides consultation and training in their areas of expertise. This includes, but is not limited to, human trafficking, crime victims’ rights, child sexual exploitation, victim services, hotline services, and trauma. CVSS can provide short-term and long-term services based on organizational needs.
FINRA Investor Education Foundation
NCVC’s Center for Victim Service Professionals supports the FINRA Investors Education Foundation by delivering trainings to advocates and other service providers so they can better meet the needs of clients experiencing financial fraud. In addition, hotline staff are well trained to support callers of financial fraud.
