2025 NCVRW Resource Guide | Additional Resources

The 2025 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week (NCVRW) Resource Guide provides a wealth of information, tools, and ideas to help you plan a meaningful observance of NCVRW.

You can use these materials in your NCVRW public awareness campaign and throughout the year.

This section features a directory of sources for accurate and current information about crime victims’ issues.

Discover—

resource centers;
training materials;
a list of organizations that offer training, technical assistance, and other services for victim service providers; and
other resources.

This timesaving list includes reliable websites that offer practical, up-to-date information and services for crime victims and those who serve them.

Use these resources to help your organization build its capacity to serve crime victims.

When available, toll free phone numbers are also provided.

Overview
How To Use the Guide
Planning Your Outreach
Working With the Media
Helpful Resources for Your Outreach
Theme Videos (forthcoming)

Background of various sized cogs. Text on the image reads "2025 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. April 6-12, 2025. Kinship. Connecting. Healing." — 2025 NCVRW Theme Artwork

Resource Centers

National Mass Violence Center
The National Mass Violence Center uses a scientific approach to evaluate what works and what doesn’t work when responding to crime victims’ challenges and needs. It then uses this information to improve victim and mental health services through training, technical assistance, and public policy development and implementation. The Center serves as the source for the best evidence for achieving a social understanding of mass violence upon which civic leaders, mental health professionals, journalists, policymakers, and victim-assistance professionals can rely.

Office of Justice Programs
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) includes six divisions, including OVC. OJP provides federal leadership, grants, training, technical assistance, and other resources to improve the Nation’s capacity to prevent and reduce crime, assist victims, and enhance the rule of law by strengthening the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Resources available from OJP include—

24-hour access to view and order OVC and other OJP publications and resources;
a searchable knowledge base of victim-related questions and answers;
a database of upcoming justice events;
a virtual library featuring more than 30,000 victim-related documents; and
the Justice Programs News & Funding Newsletter, featuring OJP resources, events, funding opportunities, and more.

Response Center contact information:

Phone: 800-851-3420; 202-836-6998 (international callers); TTY 301-240-6310
Email: responsecenter@ncjrs.gov

OVC Center for VOCA Administrators
The OVC Center for VOCA Administrators (OVC VOCA Center) supports victim-compensation and victim-assistance administrators in managing and administering their Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) funding to promote justice and healing for all victims of crime. The center provides technical support to administrators by offering opportunities for expert consultation, peer-to-peer collaboration, problem-solving, training, and innovation. It strives to build a strong administrator-led support system, broaden victim services, and advance promising policies, practices, and programs.

OVC State Administering Agencies Support Team
The OVC State Administering Agencies (SAA) Support Team is committed to assisting Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) SAAs in effectively managing the fiscal, programmatic, and award-monitoring efforts for their victim assistance program funding. The OVC SAA support team collaborates with SAAs and peers from the field to identify and address challenges regarding the allocation and expenditure of VOCA victim assistance program funding.

OVC Training and Technical Assistance Center
The OVC Training and Technical Assistance Center (OVC TTAC) provides comprehensive training, technical assistance, and other support to assist the field in building its collective capacity to serve crime victims.

OVC TTAC continues to expand OVC’s outreach through in-person and Web-based trainings. This requires ongoing capacity building to better serve victims and address the enduring and emerging issues in the field.

The National Victim Assistance Academy (NVAA) uses a blended learning approach to provide an intensive, interactive learning experience for professionals and volunteers who assist victims and survivors of crime. Its programs include the Advanced Skills Institute, Leadership Institute, and Effective Management Series.
A variety of online trainings, including Victim Assistance Training Online, are available to complete at your convenience.
The Professional Development Scholarship Program offers scholarship support for multidisciplinary teams, victim service professionals, and others in the field to attend victim-focused trainings and conferences that will enhance their ability to work with victims of crime.
Training and technical assistance (TTA) is offered to meet your organization’s needs. All TTA is designed to help you build capacity in a variety of settings and improve the quality of the services you offer victims of crime.
Attorneys, victim service providers, victims, and the general public can access VictimLaw to search victims' rights' statutes, Tribal laws, and other legal information.

Visit the OVC TTAC website to learn more and sign up to receive notifications about future training events.

OVC TTAC contact information:

Phone: 866-OVC-TTAC (866-682-8822); TTY 866-682-8880
Email: ttac@ovcttac.org

OVC Tribal Financial Management Center
The OVC Tribal Financial Management Center provides training, technical assistance, and resources to support American Indian and Alaska Native communities as they manage the financial aspects of their federal awards. Financial specialists are available at no cost to Tribal grantees to provide services, including onsite and offsite requests for technical assistance and general questions, through the Virtual Support Center.

OVC Tribal Victim Services Training and Technical Assistance (T-VSSTA)
T-VSTTA is a capacity-building program for American Indian and Alaska Native communities. T-VSTTA provides tailored, victim-centered, and trauma-informed training and technical assistance to grantees and potential grantees as they develop sustainable victim services programs.

Tribal Resource Tool
This OVC-funded tool provides a searchable directory of victim service programs for survivors of crime and abuse in Indian Country, both on- and off-reservation. A joint project of the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National Congress of American Indians, the Tribal Law and Policy Institute, and the StrongHearts Native Helpline, the directory includes American Indian and Alaska Native victim service providers, coalitions, Tribal leadership, non-Tribal-specific service providers, national hotlines, government agencies, law enforcement agencies, and health services organizations.

Online Training

Expert Q&A
Expert Q&A is a national forum that helps victim service providers communicate with national experts and colleagues about best practices for assisting victims of crime. Each month, a new topic is presented online, and subject matter experts are available to answer questions on that issue.

Online Elder Abuse Training for Legal Service Providers
This user-friendly tool offers legal service providers the knowledge and skills they need to serve victims of elder abuse more effectively. The training consists of four modules:

What Every Lawyer Needs To Know About Elder Abuse
Practical and Ethical Strategies
Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in Later Life
Financial Fraud and Exploitation

This interactive, web-based training program includes a variety of information, tools, and resources, from interactive client scenarios to printable resources for the entire office.

Victim Assistance Training Online
Victim Assistance Training Online (VAT Online) is a foundational web-based victim-assistance training program that offers victim service providers and allied professionals the opportunity to acquire the essential skills and knowledge they need to more effectively assist victims of crime. VAT Online has four sections: Basics, Core Competencies and Skills, Crimes, and Specific Considerations for Providing Victim Services.

Other Resources

Achieving Excellence: Model Standards for Serving Victims and Survivors of Crime
This e-publication provides guidelines and suggestions to help victim service practitioners and program administrators improve the quality and consistency of their response to crime victims. The model standards are intended to enhance victim service providers’ competency and capacity to provide ethical, high-quality responses to crime victims and to meet the demands facing the field today. These standards recommend procedures, describe professional skills, and identify expectations and values necessary for victim service providers.

Child Victims and Witnesses Support Materials
These materials were created to support children and youth during their involvement with the justice system as victims or witnesses to crime. Based on the input of national experts, these materials teach children and youth ages 2–18 how the justice system works, what their rights are, the roles of the different practitioners they’ll meet, and how they can cope with the difficult feelings they might have. The accompanying guides for practitioners, parents, and caregivers provide additional information on how to use the materials, as well as tips for supporting child victims and witnesses.

Existe Ayuda Toolkit
This toolkit includes replicable Spanish-language tools and resources to help improve access to services for and the competence of providers serving Spanish-speaking victims of sexual violence. Resources include Spanish terms related to sexual assault and human trafficking; PowerPoint slides to use in presentations to promotoras (community health workers) and victim advocates; and a pocket card, handout, fact sheets, and scripts for public service announcements and outgoing voice mail messages.

Helping Victims of Mass Violence and Terrorism: Planning, Response, Recovery, and Resources
Created in coordination with the FBI’s Office for Victim Assistance and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism, this OVC toolkit helps communities prepare for and respond to victims of mass violence and terrorism in the most timely, effective, and compassionate manner possible. This toolkit provides communities with the framework, strategies, and resources to—

develop a comprehensive victim assistance plan for responding to incidents of mass violence, terrorism, natural disasters, and high-profile criminal incidents;
bring key partners together to review existing emergency plans and initiate or continue developing a victim assistance plan within a community;
establish victim assistance protocols, which can greatly enhance the effectiveness of response and recovery efforts; and
follow protocols for short- and long-term responses to victims following incidents of mass violence.

Improving Community Preparedness To Assist Victims of Mass Violence and Terrorism Training and Technical Assistance
Improving Community Preparedness To Assist Victims of Mass Violence and Terrorism Training and Technical Assistance (ICP TTA) helps communities augment their existing emergency response plans to ensure they effectively include immediate and long-term protocols and strategies to support victims of criminal mass violence and terrorism.

The project provides individualized TTA to selected communities to help them develop partnerships and policies and consultants to jurisdictions that do not have the capacity to plan. Additionally, the project offers online trainings to jumpstart the planning process for those who have not been selected for individualized TTA. The project focuses on TTA for law enforcement and first responders; state, local, or Tribal governments; and victim service providers.

Innovative Practices for Victim Services: Report From the Field
This e-bulletin provides brief descriptions of practices currently used by Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) victim assistance and compensation programs throughout the country. VOCA funding supports many innovative programs and protocols for serving victims more effectively, and this online resource promotes their replication where applicable. The bulletin focuses on six key program areas: needs assessment, systems advocacy and coordination, compensation, underserved populations, victims’ rights and services, and technology.

OVC Directory of Crime Victim Services
Since its launch in 2003, the Directory of Crime Victim Services (the Directory) has helped many crime victims and service providers find nonemergency crime victim service programs in the United States and abroad.

The Directory includes contact information for thousands of victim service providers. If you find that your organization is not already listed, you may submit it for inclusion in the Directory.

OVC Victim Assistance-Related Events
This list is designed to help victims, victim service providers, allied professionals, and other interested individuals plan, promote, and locate events of interest to those serving, supporting, and working with victims in their community. Users may submit their events for inclusion in the database and can search for events and training opportunities.

If you are hosting an NCVRW event, publicize it by adding it to our Events calendar. Annually, OVC features numerous NCVRW community awareness events, resource fairs, vigils, and other events.

Vicarious Trauma Toolkit
This toolkit was developed on the premise that exposure to the traumatic experiences of other people—known as vicarious trauma—is an inevitable occupational challenge for the fields of victim services, emergency medical services, fire services, law enforcement, and other allied professionals. However, organizations can mitigate the potentially negative effects of trauma exposure by becoming informed about vicarious trauma. Tailored specifically to these fields, the toolkit includes tools and resources that provide the knowledge and skills necessary for organizations to address the vicarious trauma needs of their staff.

VictimLaw
VictimLaw is a comprehensive online database of more than 26,000 victims’ rights-related legal provisions, including federal and state victims’ rights statutes, Tribal laws, constitutional amendments, court rules, administrative code provisions, attorney general opinions, and case summaries of related court decisions. This user-friendly tool is available free of charge and provides instant access to a wide range of previously hard-to-find, regularly updated legal information.