- Primary Prevention
At its very foundation and in its evolution, the Night Owls are a model of community responsibility to prevent violence and harm from happening in our community. This is part of a primary prevention strategy.
“Successful primary prevention strategies are ongoing, collaborative, and comprehensive, and include strategies that simultaneously address individuals, relationships, communities and institutions, as well as society in general. Challenging attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that allow for violence at the individual level cannot create sustainable change alone. These efforts must be reinforced and reflected by the community in which individuals live, and by the society and institutions that create the policies and laws that shape and control their environment” OSATF Comprehensive Prevention Toolkit
- There are essentially three levels of prevention: primary, secondary and tertiary. A comprehensive program incorporates all three levels.
- Primary prevention focuses on the norms, attitudes, rules and conditions that allow violence to occur in the first place (i.e. through provision of education and skills training and addressing root causes of violence, like historical and ongoing oppression).
- Secondary prevention strategies aim to increase awareness that sexual, gender-based and interpersonal violence are issues within the community and need addressing [OSATF]
- Tertiary prevention is how we respond to violence, such as through our resources and services (ex. advocacy, accountability processes, connecting folks to resources to mitigate trauma and support healing).
Thus, prevention education on our campus can be thought of as the sharing of information intended to reduce risk factors of harm and perpetration, and strengthen protective factors against experiences of harm, like building positive community and resourcing our responses appropriately.
- A few key ideas
- Risk Reduction, or ways to reduce likelihood of victimization. You can take all the advisable steps to reduce your risk, but ultimately, it is up to the person enacting sexual violence to not be violent in the first place. So when we say risk reduction, we must also mean reducing the risk of perpetration.
- Public Awareness: raise awareness of sexual and relationship violence as an issue, and give information and resources about these issues. This increases our awareness of resources for support, and likelihood of accessing them, which supports our response, or “tertiary level” efforts.
An effective prevention program helps to identify risk and protective factors and maintain strategy to reduce risks and strengthen supports through education, social support and material and skills-based resourcing.
- Socio Ecological Model
The socioecological model is used to describe the interrelated yet distinct influences on any one person’s risk or protection against the experience of violence.
“The model is based on the recognition that no one group or institution can end sexual violence alone and that change needs to take place on the individual, relationship, community, institutional and societal levels to truly impact the problem.” OSATF Comprehensive Prevention Toolkit
From the personal to the public, it shows how individual factors and experiences influence our relationships, which influences the ways we engage in our community and the ways we engage with and perform social norms and social systems. They are also related in the reverse, where our social norms and policies inform our participation with community, which informs how we show up in our relationships, and in turn, with the relationship to ourselves and our identity.
“The model also suggests that preventing violence requires simultaneous action across multiple levels. This approach is more likely to sustain prevention efforts over time and achieve impact on the population as a whole.” (CDC)
- Trauma-Informed Principles
Our program is guided by the 3Es, 4Rs and 6Ps. The SAMSHA framework for trauma looks at the impact of the “3Es” of events, the experience of those events and the long- lasting adverse effects of the event that result in trauma To be trauma-informed, we must seek to realize the widespread impact of trauma on all persons; recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma; respond to the impact of such trauma by fully integrating this knowledge into its practices; and actively resist retraumatization in all its pursuits (the “4 R’s” of trauma-informed care). A trauma-resistant program is guided by the following six principles: safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice and choice; and recognition of cultural issues and historical oppression.
- Harm Reduction
Harm reduction incorporates prevention, risk reduction and health promotion to meet people where they are and empower folks who use drugs to live healthy, self-directed and purpose-filled lives. Harm reduction refers to a range of intentional practices and public health policies designed to lessen the negative social and/or physical consequences associated with various human behaviors that carry inherent risks. The origin of harm reduction is rooted in social justice movements, largely initiated by marginalized groups advocating for themselves and their communities. We often use the term harm reduction when referring to mitigating and reducing the harm and stigma associated with drug use.
- Interpersonal Violence
Interpersonal violence refers broadly to dynamics of violence at all relational levels, including peers, partners, community members, etc. This includes dynamics of sexual or relationship violence and abuse, including but not limited to terms of harassment, coercion, stalking, assault and exploitation. It is characterized by the use of power and control with intent to cause harm, limit options and violate boundaries.
- Bystander Intervention
The concept of bystander intervention stems from research regarding the ‘bystander effect’–the social phenomenon in which the more people that are present when someone may be in need of help, the less likely they are to offer assistance. “Someone else might step in,” or “if no one else is helping, I shouldn’t either.” are common social barriers to non-intervention. When we do intervene, i.e. as a bystander intervention, we challenge this notion by noticing the potential for harm, and choosing a response that interrupts this harm from occurring or mitigates its impact. Essentially, it’s doing your part for the community around you, and modeling for others to do the same. Common intervention strategies are collected under the “5D’s”: direct, delegate, distract, delay and document.
- Confidentiality, Privacy & Privilege
With information from the Victim Rights Law Center’s Campus Advocate Workbook
What is confidentiality? Confidentiality is an ethical (and sometimes legal) duty to protect information that someone else has shared from further disclosure.
Confidentiality is a legal, ethical, or licensing requirement that information shared within the professional relationship will not be shared outside of it. Often necessary for people to feel comfortable talking about private information, it is common in fields such as social work or psychology. Sometimes people use “confidential” when they mean “private” (x)
What is privacy? Privacy refers to the restraint or limitation of disclosing information told to you in confidence, held to high regard, and as a right granted to us by several laws. We protect people’s privacy by not sharing information about them and our interactions with them, especially in the context of a shift.
Privacy is an umbrella concept. When you tell someone that you will not reveal what they tell you, you have promised to keep that information private. Oftentimes – except in instances where a communication is privileged or confidential – the better way to explain how information will be protected is to use the word “private.” Sometimes in a campus environment, private means that you will not share information except when necessary. Private does not typically mean there is a legal or professional ethics requirement to keep the secret. (x)
What is privilege? Privilege is a legal rule that protects information shared between parties in specified professional relationships (ex. advocate-client privilege).
Privileges protect some confidences in court or administrative hearings. It is a legal protection in court and administrative proceedings for information shared in certain relationships. Privilege can be waived if the information is shared with anyone outside of that relationship. (x)