Outreach Services
The goal of outreach is to ensure women living in or leaving abusive relationships have access to someone who can respond to their crisis and support them. If you need an Outreach Worker please contact Sussex Vale Transition House.
Our Outreach program improves women’s access to services and its workers, provides help and information to women in need as well as increasing awareness in the community. The program is an important resource for family violence services, and guides victims to the services they need.
If you need assistance contact us at anytime. If you feel a crime has been committed and you need immediate help please contact 911.
Crisis Intervention
Support to help individuals in a crisis situation. Mobilization of other resources to meet the clients basic needs (transition house, police services, mental health care, financial, etc) to minimize the potential for further trauma. An outreach worker can provide reassurance to the individual and navigation to other resources. Outreach services are not 24-hour crisis response. Other services such as 911 or local transition houses provide 24-hour emergency services.
Safe Meeting Places
By definition, outreach is the act or process of reaching out, and is therefore not confined to an office. It is important for outreach workers to be accessible to clients in their regions and can facilitate this by arranging safe meeting places which are more easily accessed by the client.
Risk Assessment and Safety Planning
Risk assessment and safety planning are an integral part of supporting women who experience violence in their relationships. All outreach workers will use a recognized risk assessment tool that considers the multitude of factors that may impact upon the woman’s safety, including factors associated with the abuser, the woman’s individual situation, her support network, and the level of the system’s response. A critical component in the response to the risk is a safety plan. A safety plan works help a woman recognize the risk and plan to reduce that risk that she faces and helps her make the best decisions possible to help ensure her safety. Safety plans are varied and diverse as are the situations of violence that individuals live with.
Accompaniment
Accompaniment is providing reassurance to and going with a client when they are accessing other services related to the dynamics of domestic violence. An outreach worker may, upon request from a client, accompany her to other services.