Who We Are
Our service area encompasses Archuleta County, including the town of Pagosa Springs (the county seat and only incorporated municipality) and the villages of Arboles, Chimney Rock, Chromo and Juanita. We also serve a small number of crime victims from the southern-most portions of Mineral and Hinsdale counties. All clients we serve are considered underserved by virtue of our geographic isolation which impacts both incidents of crime and victim access to services. Lack of transportation and financial stress are common, resources and services are fewer and further away. Cultural values, family ties, religious beliefs, traditional gender roles and lack of anonymity all increase the vulnerability of the population we serve. Our clients also happen to live in a place where access to weapons (such as firearms and knives) is very common, increasing both the risks and lethality of incidents. We are the only service provider in the county and without us, crime victims would find recovery and healing to be much more difficult. They would be forced to face challenges caused by their victimization on their own and would be more likely to remain in unsafe situations or to disrupt jobs, schools and any support systems already in place to seek help further from home. ACVAP helped 376 people in 2014, 70% of which were victims of domestic violence, 2% of adult sexual assault, 10% of child physical or sexual abuse, while the balance were victims of other types of crime. (Our 2015 numbers are being compiled and should be similar, if not higher.) While our typical client is female and aged 32, we serve a diverse clientele which runs the gamut as far as age, gender, and race. We connect with victims through our 24/7 crisis hotline, through referral, through social and traditional media and through direct on-scene intervention in the company of law enforcement. From then on, our approach is to keep victims safe, to insure their rights are met, to care for their emotional and physical needs and to give them the long-term support they need to stabilize their lives. All-inclusive case management links victims with appropriate services, helps them to effectively participate in the justice process and gives support through the entirety of what is often a long and involved recovery process. Victims who connect with the agency are expected to report that they and their dependents feel more safe and secure than they would have otherwise. Victims know more about available resources and options after connecting with ACVAP. This achieved, victims have completed the critical first step toward empowerment, healing and recovery. We also work to improve our community’s response to crime victims by coordinating a multidisciplinary team which works together to create solutions and fill identified gaps that put victims at risk and which may perpetuate the cycle of violence. We provided 30 specialized trainings to law enforcement, mental health providers, health care providers, human services providers and other professional groups in 2014. Participants learned about the dynamics of violence and the complexity of victim needs and of strategies that improve victim safety and offender accountability. In addition to our victim services, we have a flourishing prevention and outreach program. Our close collaboration with our school district enables us to meet individually with students who have been touched by violence and with teachers and counselors who can support them. We connected with over 900 youth, parents and educators in 118 youth activities (such as a Girls on the Run program, an anti-bullying program at the elementary school and healthy relationship presentations at the middle school and high school). We utilize multi-faced approaches to promote Teen Dating Awareness Month, Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month. These efforts build understanding about the
What We Do
1. ORGANIZATION BACKGROUND. ACVAP’s mission is to provide emergency and other necessary services to victims and families who have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault and/or other types of victimization caused by crime. In addition, ACVAP provides educational and prevention programming in support of the belief that all people have the right to live a life free of violence. Our agency originated in 1996 as a staff position within the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Department and provided immediate assistance to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other crime. Two years later, we became an independent 501(c)(3). We have been the only provider of direct victim services within Archuleta County since. While our efforts initially focused on the safety and urgent needs of victims, programming soon broadened to tackle the many other challenges and barriers that victims must overcome in order to achieve long-term healing and recovery. We then came to understand that to reduce future incidents of violence and the social oppression of victims in our community, change was needed. This soon led to the development of our prevention and educational outreach programming. We operate today with a team of about 25 volunteer advocates who assist in providing 24-hour a day, 365-day-a-year services. Agency staff currently include our Executive Director, our Director of Advocacy, our Outreach and Education Coordinator, our Court Advocate, our Development and Evaluation Coordinator and two contractual specialists who facilitate our Women’s Support Group and our Children’s Support Group. 2. GOALS. • Sustain and enhance services that address the emotional and physical needs of victims and which help stabilize their lives, provide safety and security, and enhance victims’ experience with the criminal justice system. • Create a trauma-informed environment with needed security and efficiency updates to help victims feel safe, trusting and more at ease as they struggle with the on-going effects of trauma and violence. • Improve the evaluation of our agency’s effectiveness by continuing the design and implementation of new outcome evaluation strategies to help us improve and refine our services and to secure needed funding. • Foster community efforts which support victims and promote non-violence by cultivating relationships with other service providers, particularly our collaboration with the Sheriff’s Department which gives hands-on experience in our offices to new officers in training. • Attract new volunteers and build upon the knowledge and competency of all volunteers so victims in our county will continue to have 24-7 access to needed services.
