Assignment:
Exchange your individual report and research findings with a member of your team.
Review the report and research findings.
Meet as a team and discuss the similarities and differences of the different programs. In particular, consider the family system the program addressed, the interventions used, and the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the program.
Create a 450-word summary of your team discussion.
Program Report - Sexual Assault
The California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CALCASA)
Brief History
This movement was founded in 1980 as a grass root movement. It was mainly composed of the regional members and a volunteer board of directors. The establishment of this program was driven by the need to collectively have a voice in both the local and national levels concerning the sexual assault that faced individuals. Since its establishment in 1994, it has formed the central point of war against sexual assault within and outside California State. In 1997, Linda Bowen a woman who was working with the criminal justice department in the planning office pushed for funding to this program, and it was then that it was able to hire its first staff. To be closer to the California State capital, they moved their office to Sacramento in 1999. They launched their first campaigns in 1997 and the second campaign came in the early to mid-2000s. It then became the first coalition to have self-defense as a strategy for prevention.
Family System in Crisis
The program was designed with the aim of reducing the rate of sexual assault that greatly affected the residents of California State towards the late 1980s. The program has a definition of sexual assault as any coerced, forced unwanted contact with another person. In a broader sense, the term sexual assault is understood as unwanted and non-mutual sexual relationship. The most common form of this crisis is the rape issues. They include sexual threats, rape, intimidation, incest, assault by inmates, human sex trafficking, sexual harassments, child sexual abuse, sexual trafficking of humans and street harassment among others. The sexual abuse, therefore, entails any activity that makes up sexual assault. In a case where any of the family members have been sexually assaulted, the whole family is affected emotionally, and that plunges the family into crisis. When the term sexual assault is mentioned, it does not only entail the harassment from outsiders; it even includes molestation of a child by the parent.
Aspects such as husband raping the wife have been a common case in the recent past. This too constitutes sexual assault, and the organization treats it the same way it treats those from the outsiders (Cattaneo & Goodman, 2015). According to research, just between 2011 and 2012, the California crisis center had 31,790 survivors of sexual violence. The estimations of the number of people who have survived different sexual assault cases other than rape in California states is approximately 8.6 million. The statistics also approximate the number of females who are victims of rape in California is about 2 million. According to the national statistics, one out of five women has been victims of rape at some moments of their lives in the United States. Again, almost one out of two women have been sexually assaulted in the United States of America. These statistics are what makes this program a necessity in California. There is something they need to do. They have to help these people fight.
Program Mission
The mission of this program the provision of vision, leadership, and resources to the rape crisis centers an even all the other entities with a commitment to helping to end the sexual assault crisis. They are aimed at creating an environment free from sexual assault for all individuals irrespective of their gender, race or even family back ground. It is one of the programs that can help end the common cases of families being in crisis as a result of sexual assault. According to this program, all members of the society have the right to remain free and safe from sexual violence including the families. The husband and the wife must have a mutual sexual relationship and not a forced one. There is no point in time as per the provision of this program that child molestation by the parent or even a relative is tolerated. They define anybody who has been offended in any sexual manner as a survivor. This program is therefore driven by the needs, concerns and the voice of the sexual assault survivors.
All forms of oppression in the family according to this program's philosophy is the root of the sexual violence. They are aimed at providing the survivors with compassionate, linguistically and culturally relevant services with a lot of privacy, dignity, and respect. This is important for the program since it is through the reports from the affected individuals or families that they can fight this menace. If they don't operate with a lot of respect and dignity, people will be scared and discouraged, and the program will fail. That is a concept the program designers understand perfectly. The key concept utilized in this program is the elimination of the causes of sexual violence as that is the best method of helping the prevailing condition.
The Design of the Program
The program has a membership which is renewable on a yearly basis. The Ideas used to run the program are continuously derived from the members. There are regular members meeting which is aimed at soliciting the ideas from the members. The geographical and special locations are the basis upon which the meetings are organized. According to About Sexual Violence. (2014), the program is designed such that the whole of California State is dived into six regions. These are the North, South, Central, bay, Valley and the Mid-coast. The society has also been categorized into three groups in this program. The groups are, Women of color, Lesbians, Bisexual, Gay, transgender, Persons with disabilities and Queer communities. Each of the regions has their representatives, and everyone else is usually welcomed to attend those meetings. The program is also designed to offer training to the members.
The training is designed in such a way that they would help increase the skills and the competencies of the rape crisis centers across the state of California. They are offered in person and also through web conferences which are part of the design of this program.
Service Delivery
The program ensures that in advocates for the victims of the family once the case has been reported. As the victims begin its healing processes, the program speaks for them. It offers the survivors a platform to help them learn and become their voice. The association works in direct communication with the member centers and all the partners across the country and not just within California. They work with them to help in capacity building so that they can provide survivor centered advice. With the conferences and the training, site visit, individual's technical assistance and web conferences they help provide survivors with techniques to cope up with the situation and through their healing process. The team also provides support to the survivors in areas ranging from crisis intervention skills to families, issues of confidentiality and advocacy to the survivors who have been under-served by their customs.
Intervention Strategies
The strategies that the program use are designed with the aim of reducing psychological stress and the issues of post-traumatic stress disorder. The strategies are also aimed at reducing the number of individuals that perpetrate the actions that constitute sexual assault. The program tries to equip the victims with knowledge and create awareness. One of the strategies is advocacy. The program becomes the mouth piece of the victims. The association has its lawyers that ensure that the cases of sexual assault are investigated and taken to trial. The organization is always aimed at making an example with just one case in a given society so that people are discouraged from such acts. The other strategy the program utilizes is the green dot. This is designed with the aim of preventing any other person from perpetrating any sexual assault act. It involves training the general public with the aim of enhancing the social norms and reduce sexual violence among the people in the community and family members.
The other strategy is the real consent approach. According to Gidycz et al., (2011), this is used in the college and the university society to help enlighten men and reduce the sexual, violent behavior towards women. This is aimed at releasing morally upright people into the society so that in future, they can build a family free of sexual assault and hence a society free of sexual assault. The other strategy is the training offered to the victims. The association trains the survivors on the adaptation techniques. These are the emotional skills they can use to help them heal from the harassment and the physical skills for defense. The physical training is to help keep them safe from victimization for the second time.
Program Evaluation
On a yearly basis, the government agencies conduct research on different forms of violence and their prevalence in various regions. The organization always is on high alerts whenever the statistics are out. They take a keen interest in levels of sexual assaults in California state and compares it to previous years to check their progress. The association also have they own survey conducted every February of each year. Again, in this case, they compare percentages regarding an increase in levels of sexual assaults or the decreases. The last method used in the evaluation of the progress of this program is the survey they conduct on the survivors. Usually, the organization has a post discharge surveys to determine the number who were helped by the program every six months.
Further Research
The organization has employed a team of experts on matters to do with sexual violence. The team is constantly researching the trends in sexual assault and way to help eliminate them. They are also researching on better ways to help take care of the needs of the survivors better than the organization is currently doing.
References
About Sexual Violence. (2014). Retrieved August 03, 2017, from
https://www.calcasa.org/what-we-do/about-sexual-violence/
Cattaneo, L. B., & Goodman, L. A. (2015). What is empowerment anyway? A model for domestic violence practice, research, and evaluation. Psychology of Violence, 5(1), 84.
Gidycz, C. A., Orchowski, L. M., & Berkowitz, A. D. (2011). Preventing sexual aggression among college men: An evaluation of social norms and bystander intervention program. Violence against women, 17(6), 720-742.