Coping with Crime & Hate
Are you a Professional?
Intolerance, hate and extremist can leave especially challenging scars and trauma. However, overcoming them, even if difficult, is possible!
The experience encountered by victims in the services they seek is fundamental to shaping their path and perceived future.
Consequently, there are some key aspects to be attentive to in your practice.
Best Practices
Safe and supporting environment
→ Empathy
→ Confidentiality
→ Confortable and normalised setting
Personalised assessment and support
→ Listen to individual needs and assess coping resources.
→ Adopt a trauma-informed approach.
→ Mobilise the victim’s personal strengthens to empower them.
Cooperation
→ Connect the victim with relevant services and networks.
→ Support the victim’s network, including educating the family on how to help.
→ Prevent and advise against negative interventions throughout, which include dismissive attitudes.
Coping Mechanisms
When working with victims, the aim should always be to prioritise their safety and well-being, respecting their personal space, time, needs and boundaries.
To do so, it is advisable for you to promote positive coping mechanisms, highlighting the following:
Information seeking
You can either provide this information directly, however, doing so in a non-overwhelming manner, or redirect to secure sources.
Emphasising the positive aspects of surviving
Try to promote the shift from being a victim into becoming a survivor, reinforcing the strength and courage displayed.
Activities to regain control
Work together to discover meaningful activities which allow the victim to feel in control.
Activism
In case the victim shows a desire to use their experience to help others, help them find activism and advocacy solutions.
Getting support
Showcase the different types of support the victim can be provided, since the simple perception of support being available helps victims cope.
Moreover, when working with victims of hate and extremism, you need to be mindful of the language used, which should not reinforce any biases or prejudices, but instead focus on the road ahead.
For such, trauma-informed care is essential.
Trauma-informed care
When working with groups in especially vulnerable situations, including victims of hate and extremism, their stories, characteristics and needs must be accounted for, aiming to minimise trauma, and instead, promote healing.
For such, it is important to understand that trauma is not limited to the hateful-extremist incidents in itself, since it can be reinforced by the lack of appropriate management and support, or even triggered by various situations or continuous aggressions.
As a consequence, and irrespective of the specific professional setting you operate in, practitioners must recognize that trauma will, eventually come into play.
Trauma
An event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening.
And that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.
(Miller, K., Brown, C., Shranko, M. & Svetaz, M. (2019). Applying trauma-informed care practices to the care of refugees and immigrant youth: 10 Clinical pearls. Children, 6(8))
*Key notions
Detecting the signs of trauma
This means that trauma is the result of an unbalance between overwhelming levels of stress and coping capabilities to integrate and make sense of the emotions and situations encountered.
To detect it, you can be attentive to the following signs:
Short temper
Aggressive attitudes
Inability to focus
Fatigue
Irritability
Sickness and pain
Shutting down
Nervous tics and movements
Accounting for these difficulties, practitioners who work alongside victims have a key role, requiring to understand the potentialities of using trauma-informed care.
Trauma-informed care is a practice borrowed from the medical field, shifting the focus from trying to signal what is wrong, to understanding what has happened, aiming to provide the best possible care and healing.
Consequently, it has 4 major objectives:
Apprehend the pervasive impact of trauma and understand ways for recovery
Signal symptoms and signs of trauma
Integrate knowledge of trauma into procedures and practices
Actively work to avoid re-traumatisation
By adopting a trauma-informed response, you should focus on growth and development, upholding:
- Strengths
- Resilience
- Healing