Training & Technical Assistance
CCASA provides valuable educational programs, trainings, and technical assistance to member programs and other sexual assault victim service providers in Colorado. Educational and training topics include effective response to sexual violence victims, best practices for prevention and intervention, sexual assault laws and legislation, organizational capacity-building, working with marginalized groups, and other emerging issues as requested. Staff also regularly responds to requests for technical assistance, resources, and information.
Publications
CCASA strives to provide the most current and culturally-specific resource materials on issues related to sexual assault and service provision. We publish a quarterly newsletter (The CCASA Connection) and bi-monthly email news briefs with statewide training information, job postings, events, legislative updates, and sexual assault news. The following CCASA resources are also available:
- Toward Healing & Justice: A Handbook for Survivors of Sexual Assault (English and Spanish)
- “About Sexual Assault” brochure (English and Spanish)
- “What Happened?: Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault” brochure (English and Spanish)
- Fact Sheet: Human Trafficking & Sexual Assault (English, Spanish)
- Fact Sheet: Interpersonal Violence (IPV) & Sexual Assault (English, Spanish)
- Fact Sheet: Sexual Assault & LGBTQI Communities (English, Spanish)
- Fact Sheet: Stalking & SA (English, Spanish)
- Fact Sheet: Teens and Sexual Assault (English, Spanish)
- CCASA Resource Library
*All Fact Sheets are available in English and Spanish.
Community Building & Networking
As a membership-based coalition, CCASA facilitates communication and networking opportunities across the state. We host an annual statewide meeting, biannual regional meetings, local and web-based meetings upon request, networking events, and other opportunities for members and allies to come together. These events for member agencies and other sexual assault service providers provide the opportunity to collaborate, share resources, and learn strategies for working together as a collective voice for ending sexual violence in Colorado.
Public Policy
CCASA works to increase public awareness and influence the legislature on issues surrounding sexual violence. Our membership-based Public Policy Committee reviews state policies concerning sexual assault survivors, services, and offender management practices. The Committee strives to represent the needs of survivors and membership agencies in order to ensure that survivor support and offender accountability are prioritized in public policy-making. We track relevant bills each session and routinely testify before committees on critical sexual violence issues.
Statewide Systems Advocacy
CCASA works with statewide government and nonprofit agencies to advocate for the needs of victims, survivors, and our member agencies. This program consists of a multi-faceted approach to ensuring that the perspective of sexual assault survivors and service providers is taken into account in statewide decision-making processes. CCASA engages in multiple collaborative efforts, including:
- Colorado’s Sex Offender Management Board
- Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice Sex Offender/Offense Task Force
- Colorado Sexual Assault Response Protocol Committee
(collaborative initiative by CCASA and DCJ Office for Victims Programs — see description below) - SANE Advisory Board
- Healthy Colorado Youth Alliance
- Colorado Network to End Human Trafficking (CoNEHT)
- Ending Violence Against Women Project Advisory Board.
CCASA’s goal is to ensure that victim and community safety are prioritized at the statewide systems level.
Special Projects
Statewide Media and Educational Campaign
The Public Outreach Committee (POC) works on special projects related to public outreach for CCASA and our membership in order to further our mission throughout the state, including development of CCASA’s statewide media and educational campaign. The media campaign will focus on expanding the face of who the public understands victims to be and address how service providers can better serve victims of sexual assault.
Prison Rape Elimination Act Compliance
CCASA believes that our mission extends to all survivors of sexual violence, including those incarcerated or detained. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that at least 216,600 children and adults were sexually abused in prisons, jails, and youth detention facilities in 2008 alone. Those incarcerated while victimized face enormous challenges in obtaining critical emotional, medical, and legal support following this horrific crime. CCASA advocates for the implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) standards and provides technical assistance to the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC), Prison Rape Elimination Office (PREA) Program on behalf of their efforts to improve systems of accountability and victim assistance. For more information about PREA, please contact advocacy@ccasa.org or visit the following websites:
Just Detention International
Colorado Department of Corrections
Survivor Resource
Colorado Sexual Assault Response Protocol Committee
CO Sexual Assault Response Protocol Committee (CSARPC) is an ad-hoc multi-disciplinary committee comprised of individuals and agencies working to improve statewide response to sexual violence. The committee was founded by CCASA and the Division of Criminal Justice, Office for Victims Programs. CSARPC has been instrumental in the Forensic Compliance Evaluation Project (FCEP), which looks at how effective Colorado has been in implementing the forensic compliance statute change in 2008 which focused on victims who do not want to initially participate in the criminal justice system, but want to obtain a forensic medical exam that includes the collection of evidence. For more information about CSARPC and the Forensic Compliance Evaluation Project, please contact Karen Moldovan advocacy@ccasa.org.
Improving School Response
CCASA provides technical assistance to community-based agencies and educators working to implement Colorado Dept. of Education Comprehensive Health Standards. We feel the inclusion of content regarding sexual assault and teen dating violence provides an opportunity to inform and better serve Colorado’s youth. Additionally, CCASA is available for technical assistance, training and support regarding the development and implementation of school-based policies responding to sexual violence. It is our hope that school personnel in Colorado are equipped to appropriately recognize, respond, and refer cases involving sexual violence.
Colorado Department of Education Comprehensive Health Standards available here.
Colorado’s Sexual Assault Response Project
The Colorado’s Sexual Assault Response Project (SARP) is designed to close gaps in services to sexual assault victims, primarily in rural Colorado, through the creation of Forensic Exam Best Practice (FEBP) and Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) programs. A 2009 – 2010 statewide assessment revealed that communities in four rural regions – the Eastern Plains, Western Slope, Central Mountains and San Luis Valley – have limited or no access to Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) programs and have struggled to implement and/or maintain SART programs. The service gaps have resulted primarily due to geographic barriers, unfavorable cost-benefit analyses regarding developing and maintaining SANE programs relative to the number of victims, and a lack of personnel resources to manage SART programs.
The Division of Criminal Justice, Office for Victims Programs received a federal grant from the Office of Violence Against Women to partner with local communities to develop FEBP and SART programs.
The FEBP Program will focus on conducting victim-centered training for local medical professionals on the provision of forensic exams, courtroom testimony, and forensic kit design and processing. All training for this program will be conducted by experts from the respective disciplines.
The SART development program will provide resources for local personnel to coordinate SART efforts, as well as working with local communities to provide relevant education and policies regarding SART practices. Additionally, the project will collect data to conduct an evaluation of the FEBP and SART programs to assess their impact on sexual assault victims and the criminal justice system.
An oversight committee, on which CCASA staff participates, addresses the Project’s broad policy issues and assists in determining Project’s overall direction. That committee is a multi-disciplinary committee with rural and urban representation from statewide victim advocacy organizations, relevant state agencies, district attorneys, sexual assault investigators, law enforcement based victim advocates and medical professionals. The Project also has two subcommittees, the FEBP Development Team and the SART Development Team, which work specifically on developing appropriate and specific trainings, protocols and addressing policy issues as they arise.
Contact Terri Livermore at 303-239-4546 or terri.livermore@cdps.state.co.us for more information about the SARP.
CCASA serves on the SARP oversight committee as well as the FEBP and SART sub-committees. In addition, CCASA provides training and technical assistance on SART development and sustainability for the SARP project communities. For more information about SARTs, visit the “SART Resources” page. To talk with CCASA about training opportunities and other technical assistance for SART development and sustainability, contact Alexa Priddy, CCASA Outreach Coordinator, at outreach@ccasa.org.
