VOCA’s Eligible Core Services
Crisis Counseling: individual, in-person intervention, emotional support and guidance, or counseling, usually provided by counselors, advocates, mental health professionals, and/or peers.
Some examples of crisis counseling:
- Consoling and talking with the victim at the scene of a crime, immediately after the crime, or at the first in-person contact
- Meeting the crime survivor in the emergency room, police station, prosecuting attorney’s office, etc.
- Later in the process at moments when a survivor is experiencing extra distress, such as the anniversary of the event, the first time the survivor or family members see the person who harmed them in court, etc.
Consider the kinds of interactions you have with crime survivors in crisis. Do you help to deescalate the situation? Problem-solve? Come up with a plan so they can stay safe? Those are all elements of crisis counseling.
Follow-up contact: in-person contacts, telephone contact, and written communication with crime survivors to offer emotional support, provide empathic listening, check in on a survivor’s progress, and offer guidance for other-than-crisis reactions after victimization. This category is very broad, so you can use it to cover a variety of ways that you provide services to crime survivors.
Therapy: professional psychological and/or psychiatric treatment for individuals, couples, and family members related to counseling to provide emotional support in crisis arising from the occurrence of the crime. This may include evaluation of mental health needs and actual delivery of psychotherapy. The professional must be currently licensed in your state.
Group Treatment/Support: coordination and provision of supportive group treatment activities. Examples of this include self-help, peer and social support groups, drop-in groups, and community crisis intervention in a group setting.
Crisis Hotline Counseling: operation of a 24-hour telephone service, available 7 days a week that offers guidance, counseling, emotional support, information and referral, etc. for crime survivors. Information and Referral: in-person contact with the crime survivor during which time you identify available services and support.
Emergency Legal Advocacy: attorneys or paraprofessionals assisting survivors of domestic violence, child abuse, or stalking in filing personal protection orders, or obtaining emergency custody/visitation rights when such actions are directly connected to family violence cases and are taken to ensure the health and safety of the crime survivor.
Emergency Safety Measures: emergency food, clothing, transportation, and other emergency services that are intended to restore the crime survivor’s sense of security. This includes services that offer an immediate measure of safety to crime survivors such as boarding-up broken windows and replacing or repairing locks. Depending on the state, you may also be
able to provide financial assistance to help with these emergency items. Some states set time limits. Check with your state.
Assistance in filing compensation claims: making crime survivors aware that crime victims’ compensation is available, and, with the survivor’s request, assisting them in completing the required forms and in gathering the needed documentation to file a claim. It may also include follow-up contact with the Victim Compensation Office on behalf of the crime survivor. This service is a grant eligibility requirement. You must help with victim compensation claims to receive VOCA funding.
Personal advocacy and emotional support: assisting crime survivors with securing rights, remedies, and services from other agencies, locating emergency financial assistance, intervening with employers, creditors, and others on behalf of a crime survivor, assistance with filing for losses covered by public and private insurance programs including workman’s compensation, helping survivors to apply for public assistance such as unemployment benefits, welfare, Medicare, etc., assisting the crime survivor to recover property that is retained as evidence, and accompanying them to a hospital.
Justice Support/Advocacy: support, assistance, and advocacy provided to crime survivors to help them participate in any stage of the criminal justice process, including post-sentencing services and support.
Some examples of criminal justice support:
- Accompaniment to criminal justice offices and court.
- Transportation to court.
- Child care or respite care to enable a crime survivor to attend court.
- Notification to crime survivors regarding trial dates, case disposition information, and parole consideration procedures.
- Assistance with victim impact statements.
Telephone contacts: contact with crime survivors during which time you identify available services and support.
Shelter/Safe House: offering short- and long-term housing and related support services to crime survivors and non-offending members of their family following victimization.
Transitional Housing: generally for those who have a particular need for such housing, and who cannot safely return to their previous housing, due to the circumstances of their victimization. This includes, but is not limited to, travel, rental assistance, security deposits, utilities, and other costs incidental to the relocation to such housing, as well as voluntary support services such as childcare and counseling.
Mental Health Assistance: including substance use treatment directly related to the victimization.
Legal assistance: services in both emergency and non-emergency situations where the need for those services arises as a direct result of victimization.
Record Expunging: help for victims to expunge their records as part of victim services provided.
A note on restorative justice:
Restorative justice is an allowable service under VOCA, but they are very particular about how this service is defined and rendered.
VOCA defines restorative justice as opportunities for crime survivors to meet with the people who harmed them, if those meetings are requested and voluntarily agreed to by the crime survivor and have reasonably anticipated beneficial or therapeutic value. As important, VOCA does not fund restorative justice processes that replace other criminal justice proceedings. If you plan to request funding for restorative justice programs, discuss your procedures with your state administrator prior to submitting an application.
They will look at the following criteria at a minimum when reviewing your process for conducting these meetings:
- the safety and security of the crime survivor;
- the cost versus the reasonably anticipated benefit or therapeutic value to the crime survivor;
- the procedures for ensuring that participation of the crime survivor and the person who harmed them are voluntary and that everyone understands the nature of the meeting;
- the provision of appropriate support and accompaniment for the crime survivor;
- appropriate “debriefing” opportunities for the crime survivor after the meeting or panel;
- the credentials of the facilitators; and
- opportunity for a crime survivor to withdraw from the process at any time.
Non-allowable services: a note on crime prevention and services to people who committed a crime.
VOCA has some categories of services that are not allowed.
Two non-allowed services that may be most relevant to non-traditional providers are:
- Crime prevention: VOCA is explicit that it will not fund activities “exclusively related to crime prevention.” If this describes a large portion of your work, think about the different components involved in what you call prevention. Some of them may actually be victim services, and allowable under VOCA! You just need to describe them the right way.
For example: a street team that reaches out to affected families in the immediate aftermath of a shooting or homicide. Perhaps their goal is to prevent retaliation. But what does the immediate interaction with the victim or victim’s family look like? Are you helping them to de-escalate the situation? Problem solve? Come up with a plan for their immediate safety? That sounds a lot like what VOCA calls crisis counseling. Are you providing support groups, mental health counseling, referring them to social services, acting as a liaison to law enforcement? These are all victim services. You may have to describe them differently than you may be used to, and be careful that you are only using VOCA funds to provide such services to the victims of these crimes and their families.
- Services to people who committed the crime: VOCA doesn’t allow what they call “Perpetrator Rehabilitation and Counseling.” That means in any given crime, the services you provide with VOCA funds can only go to the crime survivor in that instance. However, many people who commit a crime may also be a crime survivor from a past crime, or may become a crime survivor in a future crime. VOCA funds can be used to provide victim services to any crime survivor, including one who has also committed a different crime in a different instance.
VOCA does allow victim services to anyone who is currently incarcerated, when the service pertains to the victimization of that individual (separate from the crime for which they have been charged or convicted).