Communicating with Victims

Working with victims of crime is challenging, given the numerous obstacles they experience.  Crisis, coupled with having become an innocent victim, creates the need for VSP to have essential and reliable communication skills when talking with victims. This chapter will provide basic techniques and augment existing skills to assist with effective communication with victims of crime.  VSP will enhance their ability to communicate by fine-tuning and expanding fundamental communication skills. VSP will learn general guidelines for verbal and non-verbal communication. 

Learning objectives include:

• Recognize general communication skills.
• Utilize good attending behavior.
• Utilize minimal encouragement to talk.
• Demonstrate the use of open-minded sentences.
• Identify and use restating (paraphrasing) skills.
• Identify and demonstrate non-verbal communication skills.
• Recognize communication pitfalls.
• Understand compassionate witnessing.
• Understand communication techniques to use with crime victims.