VSB Taking Trauma-Focused Approach to Helping Child Victims

The Victim Services Branch (VSB) is taking a trauma-focused approach in caring for children who are victims of crime.

The approach involves special interventions to help children feel safe, work through their feelings, respond to their symptoms and prevent them from being re-traumatised.

Speaking at a JIS Think Tank on Monday (April 22), Director of the VSB, Dionne Dawn, said that the trauma-focused approach is in recognition that children process trauma differently than adults.

She noted that approximately 50 per cent of the Branch’s clientele are children.

“Trauma can be very debilitating to an individual and when someone is victimised, they go through a series of symptoms and emotions that are related to trauma. This can result in them not being able to function as they would normally do. We have a suite of services that are tailored specifically for children, as we know that at their developmental stage, their way of functioning can be very different from that of an adult,” she pointed out.

The services that are targeted at children include play therapy to help them process and communicate their feelings around traumatic events.

“The language of children is play and we have found, especially with the very younger clients, that in utilising play therapy mechanisms it is very effective in terms of reaching them and getting them to open up to us, to be able to tell their story and for us to be able to work through the traumatic symptoms with them,” Ms. Binns pointed out.

The VSB Director further cited the benefits of its Cultural Resocialisation Intervention Programme (CRIP) in helping traumatised child victims understand and cope with the symptoms they are experiencing.

The CRIP provides therapeutic healing for children through cultural re-sensitisation, cognitive restructuring, behaviour modification and the teaching of coping skills to children ages six to 17 years.

“One of the activities that we do specifically for the CRIP is a balloon release activity, and what we do is at the beginning of the day when we are going through some of the therapeutic interventions, we ask them to think about different situations that would have caused trauma in their lives.

“We ask them to recall what would have happened, how they would have felt, and we harvest some of these emotions. We then have them write it down and put it on the balloon, and they will go through a ceremony where they physically release this thing by releasing the balloon,” she outlined.

Ms. Binns added that the branch works closely with school administrators and guidance counsellors to identify students in need of the intervention, and to follow up on their progress after completion.

The VSB, located in the Social Justice Division of the Ministry of Justice, is charged with the responsibility to provide counselling, emotional support and therapy to persons who have been victims of crime, through various therapeutic tools, interventions, and programmes.

For more information on the programmes and services of the Branch, or to locate a parish office, persons may visit the Justice Ministry’s website, /, or call 888 JUSTICE (888-587-8423).