Since International Women’s Day, we have been sharing blogs from members of our staff team describing a typical day. Today we are looking at a day in the life of an Independent Sexual Violence Advocate (ISVA).
This is a typical day of mine, however, there are days when I have external meetings such as a Victim’s Right to Review, or No Further Action meeting, or an ISVA Forum, so on those days, I work my client appointments round the meetings and wouldn’t usually do an initial call. Since the pandemic, we do a lot of of our client work in on-line counselling rooms and by phone. We had more face to face meetings before, these are starting to pick up again where it is helpful/appropriate, depending on the woman’s needs.
- Log on at 8:30am, send check-in email to Manager
- Check off what clients / meetings are booked in for that day (normally 2 / 3 pre-arranged)
- Go through emails and reply and upload the incoming and outgoing emails on the database
- Once emails have been cleared and if there’s enough time, open up Case Management Sheet and see which Clients need to be sent check-in emails with appointment slots for the next two weeks (this will then take up to the first appointment)
- 15 mins prior to the first client appointment, open up a Check-In document, look at the previous actions, previous Police update – make bullet points of what needs to be discussed during the call
- 10:30am, telephone call to thee client – check-in call is boundaried, that she is in a safe and quiet place, and let he know it’ll last about an hour. For me there will then be another 1/2hr for admin to type up the notes of the call, do the follow up actions – which may be reaching out to the police. Update the client’s record
- 12:00pm, check emails to see if anything to reply to urgently – skim over, if nothing urgent, then 1/2hr lunch break instead
- 12:30pm, log back on and reply to the emails and action what needs to be actioned, as the emails will be either from police or women who are not booked in for a check-in that week
- 1:30pm, open an Initial Call & Assessment document, (for new Clients), prepare the online file for when the meeting starts.
- 2:00pm, make the Initial call, introduce ISVA and the remit of the role and boundaries, Confidentiality Agreement. Explain that after the call, ISVA will sent Initial Forms and if the woman can complete and return them in the next two weeks. (Initial Call & Assessment normally lasts 1 ½ hrs and ½-45mins to type up afterwards)
- After the call, send an email to the Client thanking her for taking the call and attaching the Initial Forms as discussed
- Once all notes for the Assessment has been typed up and the file updated, add monitoring data
- Rest of the day is taken up with responding to emails, or completing actions for previous Clients, chasing up Officers for updates or confirmation of meeting times.
