How Case Management Can Help Victim Services Organizations

Victim service organizations work to provide services to victims of crimes like domestic abuse, harassment, stalking, etc., and help fund organizations that support these victims. 

According to the Victims of Crime Act, 5,469,889 new individual victims received assistance in 2020. The term “victim” is used throughout this article to refer to somebody who received assistance from a victim service provider for concerns about abuse or crimes in the past, present or potential future. These people are directly harmed or threatened by crime or abuse, and victim services are any effort to assist the victim and promote their safety, security, or recovery. 

As a victim service organization, you can use case management to simplify your processes of helping those who need it most and focus on the work that inspired you in the first place. 

Keep reading to learn how you can coordinate care for victims with case management software.

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Help Serve Victims Faster with Easy Intake

When facing tragedy or trauma, the last thing people want to encounter is a stack of paperwork and lengthy forms. According to the Nation’s Coalition Against Domestic Violence, nearly 20 people per minute experience physical abuse from an intimate partner in the United States. These numbers are alarming and happening at a fast rate, and the last thing a victim of domestic violence wants to experience while trying to get help is long waiting times. 

With easy intake, you can fill the time gap between when a victim experiences a crime and when the victim receives your assistance or support services. It’s also possible that some victims may be ashamed or embarrassed to seek help or not know where to turn, so a simple, online remote intake makes finding help quick, easy, and discreet. 

Reduce your wait times for those in need and improve your impact with a simple intake system. With case management software, you can serve more clients faster by allowing them to perform their own case intake and request assistance digitally from anywhere at any time. Having a simple application process for those in desperate need of immediate assistance may be a life-changing feature that only case management software can provide. 

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Find the Resources Victims Need with Referrals and Broadcasts 

No one or two agencies have all the knowledge, experience, or resources needed to help people on their own. As a result, helping agencies are forced to provide specialized care, services and programs aligned with what they are available to offer their clients. 

Communities often struggle to find solutions for their dysfunctional helping and referral systems due to siloed service gaps. A siloed service gap happens when victim services organizations operate independently and are reluctant to share information with other services. Although this may be a point of competition for the agency, it's the victim looking for help that loses out, as this creates a hole in the community’s social service safety net where people can fall through the cracks. 

Use case management software to manage your client records and focus less on competition between helping agencies and more on the people who need the help. With case management software, you can use broadcasts and referrals to communicate within your network to locate resources for clients in need or refer them to an agency that's more equipped to help them. 

For example, bed management is a high-priority helping agency resource as over 326, 000 people were recorded to be living in homeless shelters in 2021. Unfortunately, homelessness is often a result of women trying to escape domestic abuse. Having visibility into where you can refer those in need when your agency doesn’t have enough beds is a life-changing service you can provide to somebody looking for somewhere to sleep. 

With case management, you can simply launch a broadcast or bulletin within your network of care to inquire about open beds and additional resources when you’re unable to help. 

Cross-sector engagement and coordination are required to achieve large-scale social change, expanding your network of care and serving those in need. 

Change lives by responding to immediate needs with broadcasts, referrals, and bulletins while simultaneously pursuing long-term solutions with victim services case management software. With case management software, you can easily collaborate with other shelters by securely sharing community demographics through VOCA reports, ESG CAPER, APR, system performance measures, and data quality LSA (AHAR) 

Understand Victim Demographics and Track Your Impact with Customizable Assessments

A common issue that many helping agencies face is not knowing how to tap into their reserves of local community resources, so these resources may be unused for many years. 

Customizable assessments make it easy to show your funders your mission and tap into the assets you hope to allocate. With victim services case management software, you can track the impact of your efforts and your client’s journey every step of the way to convey the difference you’re making to your funders and show that clients are moving in a positive direction. Use data visualization and customizable assessments to identify how change and transformation occur in your community so you can keep track of the efforts made and increase accountability across your agency. 

Not only will case management software help you track transformative processes, but it can also help you to better understand the demographics your agency serves. Demographics provide valuable insights that help victim service organizations better understand the various conditions and needs of victims. Maintain individualized care with demographic insights that provide the valuable context of how the experiences, identities, and unique needs of victims may alter or affect their healing process by gathering statistics for resource development and strategic planning. For example, if the victim seeking your services is a mother, they may need different housing options, school services, and additional food to feed her child or children. 

Customizable assessments let you see how much of an impact you’re making by allowing you to track your resources and measure the outcomes of your efforts. Gain visibility into what's happening in the community your agency serves, where resources are needed or being allocated to, and understand the demographics that use your services the most so you can enhance your processes and make data-driven decisions.  

Caregivers, helping agencies, and victim service organizations are beginning to realize that they can be stronger together by combining their strengths and collectively tackling tough community challenges.

Are you ready to learn how to engage in cross-sector collaboration, explore possibilities, promote best practices, and co-create effective solutions? Learn more about using CharityTracker as your cloud-based victim services case management software to maximize your community impact with a free trial or request a demo.