[Music.] [Text: Sexual Assault Across the Lifespan National Technical Assistance Project Podcast Series. Building community collaborations to serve victims of sexual violence in later life Part 1: Why collaboration? In 2003, Karla Vierthaler, Outreach Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape was tasked with creating a curriculum to cross-train elder protective service workers and PA rape crisis advocates on the topic of elder sexual abuse. In this podcast, she describes what she learned about the importance of community collaboration as the curriculum was developed.] Karla Vierthaler: Elder issues are very different than those of adults with disabilities. Certainly there are similarities, but it's a different population with different concerns, different housing, it's just... It was just very different and there was very little research out there. So when I had started, there was a survey done with Pennsylvania advocates, rape crisis advocates around working with elders, and we found that they had done very little work with elder victims. Elder victims did not come to rape crisis centers and when they... And the few instances they had, advocates weren't quite sure of how those systems worked, weren't quite sure of the needs of elder victims, so that's where we were starting with with our curriculum. So we pulled together trainings. We did two pilot trainings across the state and then four actual "train the trainer" sessions with and we got a great response of advocates and Older Adults Protective Service workers. And we found that neither had worked with each other in the past. We found that Older Adults Protective Service workers were... Had seen cases of sexual abuse but usually paired with another kind of abuse. And they found that the elder didn't wanna talk about it; they didn't really wanna talk about it. And since there was another type of abuse occurring, they were able to make a safe place for that individual without really giving too much into the sexual abuse piece. They also found that they had had some issues when they had referred to rape crisis centers in their community because our movement has always been very empowerment based. We want the victim to come forward and seek services, whereas protective service workers, when they get a case they go to a front door, and if they need to, they bring a cop but usually they don't. So there was a barrier there. They're calling and saying, "Hey, come with me," to interview this individual, and obviously there were a lot of barriers there for advocates. So there was this disconnect and for advocates, they just felt like, "We don't know the Older Adults Protective Services system. You're not referring to us and we're not quite sure... There's a lot of dynamics here within this community and we're not quite sure how to work with them." So we went over a lot of the laws, our sexual violence laws in Pennsylvania, we went over the Older Adults Protective Services Bill, and talked about a lot of that. And I think people left with a good amount of information, but we realized we needed to do a lot more around collaboration. What we ended up with, in terms of materials, is we had this big curriculum on cross-training Adult Protective Services and rape crisis advocates and then... And really, it could've applied to other professions as well which was a large document. And then we created technical assistance guides for other professions. We created technical assistance guide for Older Adults Protective Service workers, for rape crisis advocates, for district attorneys and victim witness professionals. And then we did the large curriculum for police because we wanted profession-specific information that was easily accessible and quick to reference because we knew people weren't seeing these cases all the time, but we wanted them to feel comfortable when they did get a case that, "Okay, there's a resource out there for me." I would encourage advocates to reach out to Older Adults Protective Service workers, maybe do lunch training about the topic or ask for something similar, or even just have lunch with somebody with the protective services supervisor and just talk about how the two can collaborate. Because as much as people may not "see" sexual abuse of elders as an issue in their community, it is happening, we know it's happening, and these cases are very difficult. When it's happening in a nursing home or a personal care home or in the community, it's a very difficult case that really deserves top notch response and needs top notch response or it's gonna fall under the radar. So forming those relationships is key. I can't tell you how much I learned by having the privilege to sit and have meals with protective service workers. The stories you hear of what they see when they go into homes of the abused that's occurring in the community is... It's shocking. But you gotta kind of live in their shoes a little bit to understand what they're seeing and how you can best respond. Because unfortunately, elders are not coming into your center. They don't think the services are for them, they don't think it's for their age group or they just don't really wanna talk about it. Sexual abuse is the most under-reported form of elder abuse, and it's not surprising. So I really feel like how you are going to get elder clients is by forming community relationships and collaborative relationships. [Music.] [Text: To download the curriculum, Addressing Elder Abuse: Developing a Community Response, visit www.nsvrc.org/elearning/24598. To access the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape’s resources on responding to elder sexual abuse, visit www.pcar.org/elder-abuse. For more resources on working with victims of sexual violence throughout the lifespan, visit www.nsvrc.org/projects/lifespan . For training or technical assistance, contact resources@nsvrc.org. Thank you for joining us! Copyright National Sexual Violence Resource Center 2014. All Rights Reserved. Parts of this document may be reproduced, copied, modified, or adapted for individual educational purposes only. Commercial use and distribution of the contents of the document are not allowed without express and prior written consent of the copyright holder. This project was supported by Grant No. 2011-TA-AX-K023 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this program are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.]