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, law enforcement, health care providers, clergy, and the general public. 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 set forth 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 victim’s 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 in accordance with 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.

If you have specific questions about the Sexual Assault Counselor Training please contact our Program Manager, Jorge Barraza at [email protected] or (801) 746-0404 Ext. 706 (Yo hablo español) .