The Community Victim Support Project

Highlights of 2006

• The Victim Support Programme impacted on the lives of 35,948 individual beneficiaries
• 1,338 perpetrators participated in NICRO’s Programme for Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence
• A draft planning document around the preparation for and handover of direct community victim support services was completed
• Draft minimum standards for Programmes for Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence were completed in November 2005 and are expected to have been tested and finalised by January 2007
• A presentation of the minimum standards for Programmes for Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence was conducted for the National Victim Empowerment Team, following which a task team was elected to review the minimum standards for possible application by the sector. NICRO is to convene the task team which is set to conduct its first workshop in August 2006
• Three group facilitation training programmes were conducted for NICRO staff from June through August 2005. The initiative took place on a cluster basis with the Eastern and Western Cape joining forces, and KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and the Northern Cape forming a cluster, while Gauteng, Mpumalanga, North West and Limpopo together comprised a third cluster
• During the course of last year the Standards Generating Body for Victim Empowerment, of which NICRO is a member, finalised four victim empowerment qualifications, NQF Level 2 to 4. The team has now been tasked with developing unit standards for qualifications at Level 5 to 8
• The National Prosecuting Authority’s Uniform Protocol for the Management of Victims, Survivors and Witnesses of Domestic Violence and Sexual Offences is now available for comment. NICRO was an active participant in the National Court Support Services task team that was involved in the drafting of this document

• The Glossary of Terms for Victim Empowerment Service Delivery, and the Ethics Relating to Social Science Research with Victims of Violence and Other Vulnerable Groups, developed by NICRO task teams which were directly involved in drafting, were both released by Themba Lesizwe
• NICRO’s Programme for Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence was presented to UCT Criminology students while a presentation about the organisation as well as crime and violence in South Africa was conducted for students visiting from the University of Washington in the United States
• NICRO contributed towards several studies and publications including a chapter on NICRO’s victim support work that was included in ‘Victimology in South Africa’ the first victimology textbook released in South Africa; a study by the Institute of Security Studies around the evaluation of victim policy in South Africa; research in the Eastern Cape concerning the development of an initial technical blueprint for victim support centres at police stations; as well as two articles in the News and Views for Magistrates published by the University of Cape Town’s Law, Race and Gender Unit (Alternative Sentencing for Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence, and a submission on Explorations into a Model of Collaboration between the Judiciary and Organisations Working with Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence)
• NICRO participated in the development of a Women’s Strategy for South Africa by the Department of Social Development and assisted a community-based organisation interested in developing a court support programme for juvenile offenders
• The European Union has established a partnership with the Department of Social Development and Themba Lesizwe in support of the Victim Empowerment Programme in South Africa. The agreement entails the disbursement of grants by Themba Lesizwe for victim support service delivery and support for the National Department of Social Development’s capacity building initiative around the management of Victim Empowerment in South Africa. NICRO was involved in workshops to finalise the strategy and work plans, and has also selected to be a member of the oversight committee
• NICRO’s Community Victim Support community model, and the Programme for Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence were both written up as good practice models in a report on Crime Prevention for Africa for the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, as a component of their South-South Crime Prevention Exchange Programme (South Africa and the Caribbean)