Practice Area 4 – Being victim and survivor-centred and building trust for healing and recovery
It is important to appreciate that victims and survivors frequently report that services they seek lack flexibility and are not responsive to their needs. One of the three core values underpinning the Minimum Practice Standards is that organisations must be victim and survivor-centred. This requires services to be informed by those with a lived or living experience of child sexual abuse, and to work in partnership with service users in a person-centred and trauma-informed way.
Being victim and survivor-centred means organisations and programs need to be designed and delivered in a holistic and flexible manner and be informed by the voices, views and experiences of victims and survivors, as well as the perspectives of their family, kin and supporters.
For an organisation to be genuinely victim and survivor-centred, deliberate strategies need to be implemented to empower children, young people and adults to participate in service planning to the extent they are able or want, and to meaningfully contribute to a holistic response. At an organisational level there are many different strategies that facilitate a service which is inclusive of victim and survivor lived and living experiences. Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) is important and can include victim and survivor-led advisory panels, as well as other processes and practices that gather and integrate feedback. People with lived experience should be seen as expert contributors in CQI and decision-making about the service they receive.
A victim and survivor-centred approach starts with you
For you to effectively engage with children, young people and adults who have experienced child sexual abuse, your response needs to be victim and survivor-centred, as well as trauma-informed and culturally safe.
Each person is unique and requires a tailored and flexible victim and survivor focus. To respond well to the distinctive needs and circumstances of a victim or survivor you need to first understand how your own position, privilege and unconscious bias may affect the ways you relate.
It is equally important to appreciate the complexity of each person’s identity and lived experience, their strengths and resilience, and how systemic forms of violence and discrimination can interact with one another, creating multiple barriers for individuals.
Any number of factors can intersect, meaning that a victim or survivor may experience multiple and compounding forms of trauma and disadvantage. An intersectional lens helps us recognise connections between a person’s identity and characteristics and the multiple forms of discrimination they may experience. This in turn offers a more complete understanding of a victim or survivor’s experience and informs the provision of respectful, flexible, and engaged responses.
These factors and circumstances include:
- age and developmental stage
- type and dynamics of abuse (when and where the abuse is occurring/occurred and who the perpetrator is/was)
- cultural, linguistic, faith-based and/or religious background
- disability and the nature of the disability
- gender and sexuality
- geographic location.
Being victim and survivor-centred means providing flexibility and choice
Flexibility is important to any response offered and, wherever possible, choice should be provided to children, young people and adult victims and survivors. Within the limits of your organisation’s resources and your role, you may wish to offer choice in:
- how services are delivered – for example individual or family counselling, group work, cultural or faith-based healing practices, or remedial therapies
- safe and secure alternatives to in-person services, such as online and telehealth counselling, and support apps such as those provided by 1800RESPECT
- the type of service and service provider – including workers the victim and survivor may already have engaged with for the effects of their child sexual abuse, and other service options such as peer-based support
- the location of any response provided
- how often appointments are scheduled
- the pace and intensity of any response offered (for example, staying within what the person can tolerate at that point in time)
- service materials and resources, ensuring that they are clear and concise, taking into consideration the needs of various cohorts.
The dynamic of child sexual abuse and poor responses to past disclosure can affect help-seeking
Victims and survivors of all ages report finding help-seeking challenging because of prior experiences of betrayal and feelings of being unsafe and overwhelmed.
This requires a flexible approach that is individualised and recognises some victims and survivors have had previous interactions with services that have not been constructive and, possibly, have been damaging. They may have been denied service, not been believed, shamed, or blamed for their abuse, or experienced more abuse and harm while in a service/care setting (for example, individuals with a lived experience of institutional child sexual abuse or members of the Stolen Generations).
Victim and survivor-centred responses appreciate the impact of this betrayal and breach of trust, placing safety and wellbeing of victims and survivors at the forefront of everything they do. The power and resilience of victims and survivors is valued. Each individual is more than their trauma or abuse experience.