Child Victims and Witnesses Support Materials: Outreach and Implementation Project

In response to the OVC FY23 Child Victims and Witnesses Support Materials: Outreach and Implementation Project solicitation, the Center for Justice Innovation (Center), formerly the Center for Court Innovation, will build on its prior efforts to develop and promote the OVC-published Child Victims and Witnesses Support Materials. The proposed project will continue the Center’s work to increase practitioners’ awareness about the availability of these materials and facilitate their use with child victims and witnesses nationally. Because certain jurisdictions and communities struggle with accessing the digitized materials or lack the resources to print hard copies, the Center will financially, programmatically, and administratively award, support, and monitor sub-grants to organizations nationwide who propose to print and utilize the OVC-published Child Victims and Witnesses Support Materials. It is anticipated that these subawards will be given to jurisdictions and organizations where accessibility poses a challenge, including rural communities, tribal jurisdictions, and child-serving agencies with limited financial means. The Center will design and implement an application process for subawards in collaboration with OVC, disburse funds to awardees, monitor the use of funds, and collect data about printing requests, including the system and community context in which the materials will be used. Additionally, to fulfill the intended purpose of supporting young victims and witnesses that interact with the justice system, the Center, with the support of previous project partners, will conduct national outreach to increase awareness of the materials to further increase the use of the materials in practice.  The Center hopes that increasing accessibility and awareness of the materials will further the original project goal to provide effective, developmentally appropriate, culturally competent, trauma-informed support to children involved in state, federal and tribal justice systems as victims and witnesses of crime.