Tier 3 – Specialist knowledge

Knowledge

In addition to Tier 1 & Tier 2 knowledge, you need to know: 

• where relevant or required by your current role, maintain registration and/or accreditation with your professional body
• you have an ethical and professional obligation to ensure that you are appropriately trained and working within the limits of your professional competencies
• treatment and ways of responding to trauma are dynamic and it is important to implement a professional development plan to ensure you are providing a best-practice approach to achieve optimal outcomes for victims and survivors
• training opportunities should be individually tailored to ensure they best meet the needs of your work and role.

Skills

In addition to Tier 1 & Tier 2 skills, you can: 

• prioritise ongoing learning to enrich your work with victims and survivors of child sexual abuse as well as their family, kin and supporters
• identify gaps in your knowledge and skills in professional supervision or peer support and identify professional development opportunities with your supervisor to address these gaps
• share your knowledge and skills with other workers in your organisation
• adjust service provision to better reflect the needs of victims and survivors from diverse populations.

Resource

Supporting and valuing staff 

The following resources address the needs of staff in specialist sexual violence services: 

• Standard 5 of NASASV’s Standards of Practice Manual for Services Against Sexual Violence (3rd edition) – ‘Valuing Staff’
• Standard 5 of the National Office for Child Safety’s Minimum Practice Standards: Specialist and community support services responding to child sexual abuse – ‘Skilled and Supported Workforce’.

Checking in: Compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue 

The Professional Quality of Life Scale is a compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue scale that will allow you to ‘check in’ with how you are managing your own responses to hearing about trauma and your current work situation. The scale is easy to complete, and you will receive a score informing you of how you are travelling. It may be helpful to complete the scale regularly, to monitor your responses over time and see if there are any changes you need to be aware of. This scale is available in 28 languages.

Knowledge

In addition to Tier 1 & Tier 2 knowledge, you need to know: 

• staff with lived or living experience, including those employed on the basis of this experience, may have specific support and supervision needs
• looking after yourself will enhance the quality of your work, and in turn will impact the wellbeing of victims and survivors you work with
• professional supervision is key to your wellbeing and effective service provision
• it is important to have a balanced and diverse caseload and a range of work tasks to support your wellbeing
• your organisation should have systems and processes in place to identify, minimise and mitigate the risks and impacts of vicarious trauma within their staff group.

Skills

In addition to Tier 1 & Tier 2 skills, you can: 

• appreciate the positive aspects of working with victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and their family, kin and supporters
• advocate for support and supervision based on your own unique circumstances
• ensure that professional supervision meets the requirements of professional bodies where relevant
• constructively discuss and resolve difficult dynamics within teams and different approaches to work with victims and survivors
• work towards a balanced caseload and a diversity of tasks in your workplan, such as engaging in research, developing resources, interagency engagement, and supervising students.

Resource

The National Centre’s Learning and Development Survey 

You may wish to take a closer look at the results of the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse’s Learning and Development Survey. The findings provide valuable insights on what is most important for workers to provide timely and trauma-informed supports and services to victims and survivors, including the workplace conditions and supports organisations can implement to minimise secondary stress and enable vicarious resilience.