Heather is a social worker and a victim’s advocate at Family Crisis Services in Oxford, MS. Whether during her normal operating hours in the day or via the overnight emergency cell phone, Heather’s main duty is to coordinate services between the victim and their family, the sheriff’s department, and any medical services needed.
Transcript
>> I'm Heather Suber, and I'm a social worker, and I'm at Family Crisis Services, and I'm the victim advocate there. And kind of what a victim advocate does is basically casework for the cases we have there. We deal with a lot of rape cases and domestic violence, and I work with the families, as far as paperwork. I also coordinate with the sheriff's department, police department, medical, MDTs, which are multidisciplinary teams, and we have monthly meetings where we go in and we discuss, like ongoing cases, whether or not we're closing cases. Are they going to trial? Especially with our sexual assault cases. A busy day for me looks like three to four forensic interviews, which we do in house. I'm not a forensic interviewer, but I do the case management for them, and also, it's several domestic violence calls. You know, sporadically throughout the day. Usually we have a crisis phone, which is a cellphone that we do after hours, but during our office hours, all domestic violence calls come through the office. It's usually someone will call and will want to know where the closest shelter is, and unfortunately, the closest one here is a good 30 to 45 minutes away. So I usually give directions. I give counseling referrals. We have several counselors in the area that are specialized in domestic violence, kind of talk them through. Usually, they're pretty panicky.
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