Publications for Helping Professionals

Select publications written for those working in healing and advocacy fields


Foundations of Advocacy Training Manual

This resource offers tools to equip new advocates with core knowledge and skills for supporting survivors of sexual violence. A wide breadth of information is essential to supporting folks who have experienced sexual violence and foundational and continued opportunities for learning learning are critical to strong advocacy programs. This guide is a great start to an agency's training program. With the creation of this guide, the intention is that every agency will build on the lessons in this manual by offering and requiring regular and ongoing training for all advocates in anti-violence programs.

Created for the Resource Sharing Project & the National Sexual Violence Resource Center


Comprehensive Services for Survivors of Sexual Violence

This guide explores how community-based programs can provide comprehensive services that address the entire scope of trauma survivors’ experiences — going beyond immediate crisis response to supporting a wide range of both immediate and long-term issues that impact trauma survivors’ whole selves.

Created for the Resource Sharing Project & the National Sexual Violence Resource Center


Throw Away the Menu: Broadening Advocacy

This resource recommends survivor-serving organizations reconsider the concept of advocacy to be more responsive to the diverse and wide-ranging needs of survivors of sexual violence, and re-envision advocacy to expand beyond the care and support provided on helplines, in courtrooms, or hospitals, to also include the critical long-term emotional support survivors need in a range of contexts as they heal.

Created for the Resource Sharing Project & the National Sexual Violence Resource Center


Building Cultures of Care Guide

This guide provides information to support sexual assault services programs in strengthening their organizational and individual responses to survivors of sexual violence through the use of a trauma-informed approach. It provides an overview of the core principles of trauma-informed care and guiding points and questions to help organizations build cultures grounded in the philosophy of trauma-informed service delivery.

Created for the Resource Sharing Project & the National Sexual Violence Resource Center


The Brain, Body & Trauma

This online course provides an overview of the neurobiological and psychological implications of sexually violent trauma and the information and skills necessary for victim service providers to provide trauma-informed services.

Created for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center


Bringing Hope: Responding to Disclosures of Child Sexual Abuse

In this course, victim service professionals will learn how to describe types of sexually abusive behavior, review practical skills for listening to a disclosure of child sexual abuse, and identify the three guiding principles for responding to a disclosure.

Created for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center