| Promoting resilience and recovery |
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| Wednesday, 22 October 2008 10:57 |
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The opportunity to promote recovery lies in each community responding to those affected by violence with care and compassion. Big Idea 2: Implement and research the impact of Community Mobilisation Projects then replicate successful strategies across the country. South Africans, as a nation, do not feel safe. Having grown up with a history of physical, legal and structural violence we are seemingly unable to stop this violence from circling amongst us in our homes and streets. Living in contexts of high levels of violence raises our anxiety, our stress and our fear. These anxieties alienate us further from each other as we retreat into private worlds, resort to stereotypes to identify potential perpetrators and adopt a victim identity. The majority of South Africans have had one or more experiences of life threatening violence during their life time. They are expected to recover from such experiences in an environment of ongoing threat. Whilst the victimisation event itself is terrifying, the community's lack of support, stigmatisation and/or rejection of the victim exacerbates matters. Whilst most victims of violence will recover after the initial weeks of distress, for some there will be significant psychosocial effects expressed in reactions of post traumatic stress, depression, somatisation or substance abuse. People living in challenging circumstances may adopt a level of resilience in order to survive -yet this masking of experience does not change the underlying fragility. These kinds of responses are costly both for the individual and their family, but also for the society as a whole. A person's functioning may be significantly reduced, impacting on their capacity to work, parent or learn. It is against this background that there is a real possibility of further acting out this experience of violence on to others. In the past fifteen years South Africa has taken steps towards increasing support to victims. There have been attempts to address secondary traumatisation that may occur through an unsupportive Criminal Justice System by placing the victim's needs at the centre of all proceedings through a Victim's Charter and minimum standards for victim services. Trauma support volunteers are currently based at most police stations, some tertiary hospitals and courts. The vicarious trauma that police, teachers, social workers and primary health care workers may experience and may pass on to victims, has been named. Concrete support services such as shelters, statutory services for children, one stop centres for rape survivors have also increased. There is greater awareness amongst employers to provide professional services for employees who have experienced violence, and there is a scattering of NGOs across the country providing professional, accessible trauma counseling services. For all these policies and structures in place however, victims continue to be traumatised whilst reporting the crime, services remain patchy and many victims fail to access support. |