This story includes themes of domestic and sexual violence. Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline if you need help at 1-800-799-7233.
Amy Brandon, Freedom House volunteer coordinator of the sexual violence program, said the greatest need of the organization is for volunteers. Brandon said Princeton-based Freedom House aims to send advocates to the hospital whenever a survivor comes for help. That person then provides emotional support and helps survivors understand what to expect in the future.
Freedom House isn’t the only agency looking for more of these hospital advocates. VOICES in Stephenson County also is in need of more volunteers, specifically on-call medical advocates dispatched to FHN Memorial Hospital.
Beth Maskell is the executive director of VOICES in Freeport, Illinois. It’s a duel service agency, she said, serving survivors of both domestic and sexual violence.
Volunteers at VOICES are expected to assist when any survivor presents themselves at the hospital. “That volunteer goes and responds and provides crisis intervention and education to that patient during the time of crisis. And we are currently extremely low on volunteers that are, you know, able to assist with that,” said Maskell.
Maskell says they respond to around 25-30 calls a year. She said the reason for the shortage of direct service medical advocates might be because of barriers.
“So we were quite stable for many, many years, because those that had committed years ago provided our agency service for such a long, wonderful time. And then for various health reasons, retirement, family, you know, that sort of thing, have kind of slowly dwindled away. And now we're left with a problem of finding new community involvement, which has been hard,” she said.
According to Maskell, it takes about 40 hours of training before a volunteer can be assigned to work:
“I think the biggest barrier is completing the 40-hour training and the commitment, the time commitment for that training, is barrier number one,” said Maskell.
She said people might feel intimidated in the nature of the ask because they may not know what being an advocate entails or how to respond in an intimate moment.
Additionally, location matters. “We're a rural community. So I don't think that we have just the community based support that some of the more populated communities do, to have people that want to put that much commitment in, and then they have to respond to an emergency room with one within one hour. I don't know if it's a barrier or not,” she said.
“But being from a rural community, maybe if we had more people from the Rockford area that wanted to respond, you know, that's a little harder to do,” said Maskell. It takes less than an hour to get from Rockford to Freeport.
VOICES offers training once annually, during the fall. Maskell said in 2018, they trained five people. The number of people enrolled in training dropped this year to two.
“We really tried to advertise very thoroughly for [it]. We paid for advertisement on the TV, on a local radio station here. You know, just social media and things like that. And unfortunately, only two people are attending the training. Which we are very thankful, however, for those two people,” she said.
Graduation day is set for October 24 for these Stephenson County volunteers. She said domestic and sexual violence is a “community problem.”
“And it happens in so many households, that if we were just able to continue to talk about it, and have it be a subject that was a public subject that would help so many lives,” she said.
“There is assistance available through agencies like ourselves, and you know, with community involvement and support and volunteers, we can provide survivors with the help that they need or with actions. Nothing about this process is easy. But talking about it and being active and potentially hoping to support agencies like ourselves really does make a difference,” said Maskell.
