With some 5,006 new clients in fiscal year 2024/25, the Victim Services Branch (VSB) in the Ministry of Justice continues to provide therapeutic interventions for victims of crime, helping them to manage trauma and navigate the justice system.

Director of the VSB, Dionne Dawn Binns, tells JIS News that a significant number of Jamaicans are affected by crime daily, monthly, and annually.

These include sexual offences, murder, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, and assaults.

“Our services focus on dealing with that trauma and helping them to overcome it. Our services to the public are provided through our 14 parish offices islandwide… and persons can go there to access the services that we offer,” Binns says.

She further notes that the VSB recognises the challenges some individuals face in accessing its services. As a result, the Branch has broadened its scope, enhancing service delivery to better support victims.

 “Our services, which are primarily counselling and emotional support, can be done face-to-face. Also, we have an e-counselling option, [and] we [also] meet persons at other locations outside of our offices, be it the school, police station, maybe a church in the community, to be able to provide them with the service that they need,” Binns explains.

Approximately 50 per cent of the VSB’s clients are children, seeking support for various reasons, including experiences of sexual offences or the loss of family members to violent crime.

The agency has developed special intervention programmes for children, led by trained social workers and psychologists, to provide targeted support and therapeutic care.

“What it entails, overall, is their utilising various therapeutic practices to achieve healing, in some instances, to achieve behaviour modification, cognitive restructuring, and overall to teach coping skills to our children,” Binns informs.

One such intervention is the Cultural Re-socialisation Programme, which provides a day of therapy for at-risk or traumatised children aged 12 to 17.

Signs of trauma in children include behavioural changes such as increased withdrawal, persistent sadness and loss of playfulness.

“It could [also include] other behavioural things, such as their starting to wet the bed; when they’re supposed to be in class at school, they don’t want to be in class; they don’t want to be around certain people. It’s just a myriad of things that can manifest in a child to show that they are experiencing symptoms of trauma,” Binns informs.

These children, drawn from the VSB’s clientele or schools, are taken to a designated green area, offering a therapeutic environment for healing and emotional support.

“We take them through a series of activities throughout the day, firstly, to harness whatever trauma they would have been dealing with, to be able to help them to identify the trauma [and] the symptoms so that they can acknowledge that ‘this is what I’m going through’. Then we take them through some activities geared towards healing the trauma that they’re facing and, finally, some activities to help them to cope,” Binns tells JIS News.

“The truth is, once we take them out for that one-day intervention and they’re in this green space where they’re in touch with nature and they’re in a relaxed environment, they are going back to their various communities where a lot of the events are taking place that are traumatising them. So, we want to teach them coping skills, so they know when they are faced with these events… .  We give them the tools in terms of the things that they can do to be able to cope,” she adds.

The VSB Director notes that follow-ups are routinely conducted after a child receives intervention, ensuring continued support and care.

“We work very closely with the school, so the guidance counsellors are aware of the children who would have gone through the intervention. Some amount of monitoring is done from that side in terms of monitoring the child to see the changes.,” she says.

“Among the critical changes that we have seen coming out of this intervention is a child being able to not only identify that, ‘okay, this type of behaviour…’ , or ‘this that I’m feeling is as a result of trauma’, but now better able to express what it is that they’re experiencing,” Binns adds.

Additionally, the Director notes that children are taught coping skills to help them effectively manage their experiences and navigate challenges.

“So… if they encounter another event that evokes trauma, they know some techniques that they can utilise, be it deep breathing to help resolve anxiety that they may be feeling, or something like ‘journaling’ to be able to let out the emotions that they have inside,” Binns says.

For more information on the Victim Services Branch’s services, individuals may contact 888-JUSTICE (888-587-8423) or visit the Ministry of Justice’s website at moj.gov.jm.