Victim Services Division Improves Operations Islandwide

The Victim Services Division (VSD) is improving its operations and services in the offices islandwide.

The Division, which mainly provides counselling services to victims of crime, also provides technical services, crisis intervention, volunteer mobilisation and court support.

In an interview with JIS News, Executive Director of the VSD, Osbourne Bailey, said the progressive improvement of the VSD includes sharpening how existing services are executed.

“We sharpen the skill to offer the programme in a standardised way across the island. We call that standardisation where we ensure that the same level of service and expertise you are getting in St. Thomas is the same you are getting in Hanover,” he said.

“That process is ongoing. We also ensure that the psycho-emotional care component is effective. This is where the professional skills of the counsellor are brought to bear to ensure that the victims are offered the most up-to-date care. We call that the professionalisation of the service,” Mr. Bailey said.

In addition to working to improve the standardisation and professionalisation of the service, in recent months the VSD also revised their intake process.

“When we say intake process we mean that process by which clients are registered into the programme. So if you are a victim of a crime and you come into the programme, the intake process registers you. We had done some revision of the intake process to ensure that we are sharpening our intake of the information regarding the emotional trauma a person has been through,” Mr. Bailey noted.

“We have also increased the training opportunities internally for staff that allows them to become more skilled at what they do. So, those two concepts are constantly being sharpened to ensure that the VSD fulfils its mandate to persons through standardisation across the island, and the professionalisation, where we train the staff to sharpen their skills,” Mr. Bailey added.

Meanwhile, he said the Division remains focused on improving service delivery through the use of internal monitoring mechanisms.

“Internally, the numbers that we see are one of the factors that we use to assess the extent to which we are offering our services. Part of that mechanism involves the client assessing the quality of the service they are offered. So, they are asked questions like how were you dealt with? Were you dealt with promptly? Were you dealt with professionally? Were you dealt with confidentially? Did the counsellor try to understand? and What aspect of the counselling best benefited you?,” Mr. Bailey said.

“Randomly, we at the national office would also select from some of those client responses and just call to do a quality follow-up to ensure that the form wasn’t created and to ensure that it truly reflected the opinion of the victim,” he noted.

For a full list of services offered by the VSD, persons can visit moj.gov.jm