The UCASA Sexual Assault counselor 40-hour training is designed for community and system-based sexual assault advocates and law enforcement. Community members are welcome to attend community training events which can be found on our calendar page, and check out our YouTube page for additional training and webinars.

The professionalism and expertise of sexual assault advocates are essential to maintaining clients' privacy. The Utah Confidential Communications Act requires that sexual assault advocates have forty hours of sexual assault-specific advocacy training. Conversations with victims or alleged victims are privileged only if the advocate has completed forty hours of sexual violence-specific training. We collaborate with local and regional care personnel to provide our Sexual Assault Counselor Training. The training is available to advocates and law enforcement. Our training team includes legal, medical, and human services professionals who facilitate each topic alongside our trained and dedicated staff.

Our training was carefully developed with input from all sexual violence advocates and programs across the state. More specifically, this course offers the following benefits:

• Meets the requirements outlined in the Utah Confidential Communications Act and requirements set forth by Utah's funding agencies. 
• Gives attendees information and tools to understand the role of sexual violence advocates.
• Supports attendees in recognizing and combating bias - both explicit and implicit.
• Empowers attendees to maintain the dignity of victims.
• Supports attendees in encouraging victims’ self-advocacy and personal decision-making throughout the response processes.
• Situates each participant within their role as an advocate and reinforces their responsibility to the agency, its clients, and to victims.
• Certifies volunteers, staff, and community allies as sexual assault advocates - allowing for privileged, confidential communications with clients. 

We are committed to training excellence, and we are confident that this collaborative training solution will be a valuable enhancement to your current volunteer and staff training program.

As a professional training and development organization, we combine instructional expertise with curriculum development skills and an extensive history of advocacy and direct service experience.

Basic Structure

Our Sexual Assault Counselor Training is the result of decades of feedback from professionals who work with sexual violence survivors and perpetrators throughout the state. The curriculum is twenty-four hours of statewide core topics presented by our staff and sixteen hours of community-specific topics facilitated by the needs of the local community. This overall course design is meant to meet the needs of each area, population, and specific community dynamics. We work with local communities to determine the course content of the 16 hours of community-specific content and any continuing education or professional development topics. 

Course Overview

The Sexual Assault Counselor Training course is designed to meet the training needs of individuals who might respond to a victim of sexual violence. The course is meant to meet the needs of a variety of volunteers, staff, and allied professionals who consider themselves advocates—whether as law enforcement officers, prosecutors, volunteers, advocates, medical personnel, caseworkers, or educators. However, this course is not designed to provide the intricacies of the investigation, prosecution, evidence collection, or case management. This course is particularly helpful to individuals who provide many different types of services to victims of sexual violence seeking skill-based knowledge and tools for improved response and intervention.

A side benefit of the course is its multidisciplinary appeal to professionals not working directly with sexual violence issues who also want a better understanding of sexual assault intervention concepts and policies. This course is designed and available to all public service, advocacy, and education organizations, along with information about why the course is helpful to them.

Price

The Sexual Assault Counselor Training is FREE! 

Requirements

In order to receive sexual assault counselor training, you must follow the following instructions. This certificate is for you to help empower survivors and use the skills that you receive from this training to input them into your advocacy work. 

• MUST have the camera on during training at all times. (except for when self-care needs to come into effect)
• Participation is required to receive a certificate. 
• Be respectful of each other.

It is critical to attend all 40 hours of the training. It will take place on the following dates:

To Register, please CLICK HERE.

For additional questions, please contact Jorge Barraza at [email protected].