Victim Services and Vicarious Resilience

Project Description:

Many people are familiar with the term vicarious trauma, where victim service providers may be exposed to their clients’ trauma and in turn can feel the negative effects. This is what we think of oftentimes since these providers work day in and day out with people who have been through very traumatic events. We may think that their work can cause them to be pessimistic, depressed, and burnt out to the point where they leave the field. More recently, research has explored the idea of vicarious resilience since victim service providers may also witness their clients perseverance, strength, and growth. Through witnessing this, service providers may experience growth within themselves and benefits such as their physical and mental health improving, making proactive decisions, and forming connections with clients.

We are interested in examining how vicarious resilience plays a role in service providers’ lives, how their well-being is shaped with the help of their organization, and how systemic barriers can impact their work. Recently the Victimology Research Centre has launched a detailed survey on vicarious resilience and the survey has been distributed to over 700 service care providers across Canada. While we wait for more survey responses, our team has been working to gather relevant literature on vicarious resilience and what service providers need.

Just this month we held a national conference with victim service providers and volunteers where they were able to come together from across Canada. It started with a keynote speaker that discussed the notion of overwhelming trauma with ideas of how to cope and then we moved into discussion groups where the providers were able to talk about their own experiences. The questions examined any change they experienced due to exposure of their client’s trauma, how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their work, and what resources they received from their organization that support their well-being. From this, specific themes are highlighted in relation to victim service providers and their vicarious resilience. The findings will be presented in a report and we aim to create a toolkit in the coming years. The goal of this project is to create a toolkit for service providers that will allow them to further develop vicarious resilience and maintain wellbeing.

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