Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Victim Services

STACY LEE: Welcome, everyone. And thanks for joining us for the webinar, Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Victim Services, hosted by the National Institute of Justice in conjunction with the Office on Violence Against Women. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Janine Zweig, Executive Science Advisor at the National Institute of Justice.

DR. JANINE ZWEIG: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Executive Science Advisor at the National Institute of Justice, which is the research, development, and evaluation agency of the US Department of Justice. Today we have really great presenters who will discuss the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on victim services. As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020, had a detrimental impact on communities across the nation and meaningfully affected various aspects of individuals' lives. As COVID-19 cases surged in the United States, there were significant effects on both victimization rates and access to victim services. Stay-at-home orders coupled with economic insecurity, isolation, and other stressors in the home including the care and homeschooling of children led to an increase in family and gender-based violence and additional barriers to accessing help. During this time, service providers reported not only an increase in the number of victims seen but also an increase in the severity and frequency of violence experienced. 

Compounding this increase in violence was a disruption to available victim services and reductions in overall service capacity. To further complicate these issues, the pandemic had a disproportionate toll on people from marginalized communities. Survivors in rural communities already face challenges to accessing victim services and during the pandemic, these service providers were not well-suited to adjust to new social distancing requirements. Culturally specific agencies faced diminished capacity due to limited staffing and funding limitations. Survivors who did not speak English or were immigrants experienced even more difficulty accessing resources due to language and cultural barriers. And survivors of color confronted challenges in help seeking and safety planning due to fear of interacting with law enforcement. 

In 2021, NIJ funded researchers at RTI International to study how COVID-19 affected the demand for victim service provision, the impact of local culture and mandates on victim service provision in the short term and sustained changes to service models based on the necessary innovation and modernization that occurred during the pandemic. They also examined whether there are differences in these phenomena regionally in rural and urban settings and among specific types of victim service providers. Today, we will hear from these researchers and learn about the findings from their study. We will also hear from grantees of the Office on Violence Against Women about the impact of COVID-19 on their communities and in their work. I'm looking forward to a robust discussion. With that, I will pass it to my colleague Ginger Baran, Associate Director from the Office on Violence Against Women. Thank you.

GINGER BARAN LYONS: Thank you so much, Janine. Good afternoon. I want to start by thanking my colleagues at the National Institute of Justice for convening this webinar and inviting OVW to be a part of it. For anyone who's not familiar with OVW, we administer grant programs under the Violence Against Women Act. We work closely with NIJ to study gender-based violence and also to examine solutions to it, so that we in turn can best support the good work that our grantees are doing every day to support survivors and hold offenders accountable. The NIJ study you'll hear about in a moment as well as OVW's most recent report to Congress that you can find on our website both tell pieces of the story of COVID-19's impact on victim services. And as I'm sure many of you joining us today can attest, that impact persists in the losses grieved, in the work that you do in your own lives and in the lives of the people that you serve. I remember hearing about a grantee of ours in a tribal community and how in 2020, they put together a bunch of bags filled with arts and crafts and activities and that type of thing for kids. And when they went out into the community doing outreach from a distance, they gave those bags to families that were struggling with all the stress that the pandemic brought including having kids at home while schools were closed. It was something that could keep a small child occupied, even for just a brief time and perhaps give their parent a moment to pause and have a second to themselves. This example reflects extraordinary savvy and ingenuity that victim services providers showed even as their staff endured hardships right alongside the people they serve. And it also underscores the isolation and desperation that was made so stark during that time. 

As Janine noted, COVID made bad times worse for a lot of people and it had a disproportionate impact on different populations and in different parts of the country. OVW staff recently traveled to the territories of American Samoa, Guam, and Northern Mariana Islands where advocates noted that the pandemic came right on the heels of two devastating typhoons that had completely ravaged infrastructure. In reading through RTI's findings and taking stock of what our grantees have shared with us, we can gain a better understanding of what sorts of supports we at OVW can provide to grantees during emergencies and disasters. We invited two of our grantees who were cited in that congressional report that I mentioned earlier to share today about doing victim services during the pandemic. 

Joyce Kao is Clinical Manager at the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence where she previously served as an advocate and case manager. She's also worked as a social worker in Taiwan with domestic violence survivors and is a hotline manager serving underaged survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse. As an immigrant herself, Joyce is passionate about working with immigrant survivors with diverse cultural and language backgrounds. 

Kelly Moe Litke is interim Executive Director at the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault. She's been working in the Anti-Violence Movement at local and state levels for more than 20 years including the last 14 at the Wisconsin Coalition, whose mission is to create social change to end sexual violence. Thank you so very much, Joyce and Kelly, for what you do and for taking time today to tell us about it. My colleague Olivia Storz is here as well to facilitate the discussion with Kelly and Joyce a little later. And now I'll hand it over to Erica.

ERICA HOWELL: Thank you, Ginger. And good afternoon, everyone. My name is Erica Howell and I'm a Social Science Research Analyst here at NIJ. And today, I have the pleasure of introducing our first set of presenters from RTI International. Rebecca Pfeffer is a Senior Research Criminologist and Program Manager in RTI's Victimization and Response program. With over 15 years of experience, she's an expert on understanding, measuring, and addressing the victimization experiences of hard-to-reach populations, ranging from individuals who have experienced human trafficking to people with disabilities. Dr. Pfeffer's work is focused on the provision of victim services for people who have experienced human trafficking or gender-based violence, particularly around effective collaboration between law enforcement and victim service providers. 

Our second presenter is Hannah Feeney. Hannah Feeney is a Community Psychologist in RTI's Victimization and Response program. With over a decade of experience, she has expertise in system's response to victimization of marginalized communities and help seeking behavior in survivors of gender-based violence. Dr. Feeney's current work focuses on sexual victimization, female genital mutilation, and victim service provision. This work includes training and technical assistance to practitioners. She has also previously served as a community-based advocate for sexual assault survivors. As Janine mentioned, in 2021, Rebecca and Hannah received NIJ funding to conduct a study focused on understanding the impact of COVID on victim services. Today, they'll be presenting findings and implications from that study. Hannah and Rebecca, I will let you take it from here. Thank you.

DR. HANNAH FEENEY: Thanks so much, Erica. I am so excited to be here today with my colleague Rebecca Pfeffer so we can share with you the findings from our NIJ-funded study, Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Victim Service Provision Challenges, Innovations, and Lessons Learned. Before we get started, just our quick funding disclaimer. This project was awarded by the National Institute of Justice, but the opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed here are those of Rebecca, me, and our co-authors and do not reflect those of the Department of Justice. So, our presentation today is going to follow a pretty standard approach. We're going to start with some background. I'll hand it over to Rebecca to talk about the methods and then we'll talk about some of the select findings from this project. We won't be able to get into all of them, but we will share our final report. And then, some recommendations for different types of folks. So really excited to share this with you. 

I'm going to kick this off by diving into our background here. So unsurprisingly, COVID-19 impacted gender-based violence. I think we can all really anticipate that, everybody here on the call today. So the impacts of COVID have been associated with an increased rate of gender-based violence or GBV including sexual assault, abuse, intimate partner violence, and sex trafficking. And the nature of this violence was found to be more severe. And folks really attribute this to the fact that the factors that place individuals at an increased risk of violence were also the documented impacts of the pandemic. So that included housing instability, job instability, or lack of job security, economic strain, new and different childcare responsibilities, and lack of social support. With that, victim service providers also faced a lot of challenges. Victim service providers faced really competing needs. So this higher demand for services because victims were at increased risk alongside the heightened call to follow public health guidelines to reduce COVID-19 like physical distancing or limitations on the numbers of individuals that could be in a space together. So these approaches were really effective at preventing COVID-19 but also created really unique challenges for those supporting folks experiencing violence. 

Rebecca, myself, and our colleague Jaclyn Houston-Kolnik conducted a small-scale North Carolina-based evaluation in the summer of 2020 to really start to understand the impact of COVID on victim service providers, and we learned that victim service providers were really just jumping in, handling it, finding adaptations to make sure that they could continue to serve survivors with differential rates of success. Some of the adaptations were not super successful but others really were. We were hearing that some of the changes that they were making felt like they were long overdue and that they hoped to maintain these innovations over time. So we found this to be a really critical opportunity to understand the impact of COVID-19 on victim service providers and better understand whether the innovations that were being made could hold utility moving forward. So, this led us to this idea of our NIJ-funded study. 

Our team was awarded NIJ funds to understand the impact of COVID on service provision for victims of gender-based violence in eight US counties across the United States that varied in geography, urbanicity, and sociopolitical status. Rebecca is going to get a little bit more into that and the methods in just a second. We sought to document and understand the challenges that were posed by the pandemic, so what were the things that were really causing victim service providers the most stress during the pandemic, how agencies were actually pivoting to rise to the occasion and address these challenges and then what innovations were successful and really warranted long-lasting implementation, even after the pandemic was starting to settle down. So, we sought to do this through three key research questions, the first of which is, “How did local legal, policy, and cultural frameworks impact victim service provision during the pandemic? How did the pandemic change victim service delivery models and practices and to what extent were those successful or sustained in the long term?” And then we ask whether there were any patterns in the way that victim services were impacted by COVID based on victim and service provider characteristics like the types of victims served, the region where they were served and the number of staff. So today, Rebecca and I are really going to focus on what we found for these first two research questions, though all of the findings are included in our final report. I will pass it over to her now to describe the methods that we used to answer these questions.

DR. REBECCA PFEFFER: Thanks, Hannah. For this project, we started with a stratified sampling approach where we selected four different states that had experienced their first initial surge of COVID at slightly different times in early 2020. Then within those states, we selected two county level sites, one urban and one rural. The urban sites had some sort of major urban epicenter. The rural sites usually had a small town or a sort of concentrated area of inhabitants with at least 67% rurality, so we were really trying to find urban sites and the rural sites that had some representation of victim service provision but still provided us with the perspective of a rural setting. Within those eight county level sites, we partnered with one primary victim service provider partner who served victims of gender-based violence. We worked with them to identify all of the other county level or county victim service providers that also worked with this population. 

What we wanted to do was basically in three parts. First, we started by doing a state and local policy assessment of each of those eight counties to provide a framework for understanding the findings for the surveys and interviews that we were going to do. We also deployed a web-based survey to each of the victim service providers that worked with victims of gender-based violence in these eight sites. And we did in-depth case studies with eight agencies in each of the sites. Our objectives for these three different data collection strategies were different. For the web-based survey, we really wanted to understand from the bird's eye view what types of services were available and how those seem to have been impacted in the short and long term by the pandemic. And with the case studies, we used these in-depth interviews to really understand some of the more nuanced effects of the pandemic on staffing, on decision making, fundraising, all of these complicated mechanisms that were very affected by the pandemic. So just to give you a brief snapshot of what these respondents looked like. 

We had between two and 18 responses per county, which seems like a big range, but in rural counties, there tended to be, of course, fewer victim service provider agencies. So our response rate was around just over 50%, more or less across sites. Then to give you a sense of what these agencies looked like, this is the range or the spread of reported staff sizes among survey respondents, so you can see the majority had between 11 and 50 staff members. This is not including volunteers, these are paid staff. Although about a quarter of the responding agencies had 51 or more staff members. So, these are fairly moderate to sizable agencies that responded to the survey. In terms of the types of clients they served, we found that these agencies represented many forms of victims who had experienced many forms of gender-based violence. And of course, these categories aren't mutually exclusive. Many respondents served multiple types of victims of crime, including people who experienced gender-based violence. Lastly, to give you a sense of the size of the case studies, we conducted between six and 14 interviews in each site. We conducted site visits in person, so we were able to actually visit these agencies and sit down with respondents in all but one site where we conducted the site visit virtually. These site visits took place over one or two days between late 2022 and early 2023. And I'll turn it back over to Hannah to begin sharing some of our findings.

DR. HANNAH FEENEY: Yes, I have the pleasure of starting to share our findings here. One thing I'll note as we dive into these is we really hope that some of you see your experiences reflected in our findings here today. We did intentionally work with a really heterogeneous population when we were selecting our sample so that we could understand the greatest variety of experiences as possible. But we also recognize we didn't get to talk to all of you, so your experiences might not be reflected here. And if that's the case, feel free to chat them or share them with us separately. We do find all of it very interesting. I'm going to kick us off by sharing our findings for research question one, which is, “How did local legal, policy, and cultural frameworks impact victim service provision during the COVID-19 pandemic?” And kind of the long story short is that some mandates impacted services while others didn't. So, some agencies reported that public health mandates, like, mask requirements, social distancing, vaccine requirements, never really impacted their service delivery. Importantly, this did not mean that implementing the mandates was easy or a seamless process, but rather they just didn't have to adjust their services that they provided because of these public health mandates. We have a quote here that says, “And I think that was a significant challenge for us, right, is that push. We have to be really trauma informed and be very survivor-focused and survivor-led in the middle of a pandemic where people are getting really sick. And so you have this kind of like, well, you really have to keep everyone safe. I have to tell you to wear a mask. I have to tell you to stay in your room if you're sick. I have to move you to a different place, right? Because I'm trying to--you have 58 people you're trying to protect as supposed to one.” This quote is from a respondent who is located in rural Massachusetts. What I think this quote really highlights is how the mandate presented a challenge but this agency forged ahead regardless. 

But other agencies didn't take this approach, so notably respondents in Texas and some in rural Washington were more likely to report that mandates were more of a challenge which might reflect the political climate they were operating within and their clients' attitudes towards these public heath mandates. So, while this victim service provider in rural Massachusetts could say I have to tell you to wear a mask and that's not really going to impact their ability to provide that service, that might not fly at a Texas victim service provider agency in the same way, right? So, there were other types of mandates, however, that definitely impacted services. For example, closures to systems like schools or courts or correctional facilities really impacted victim service providers' ability to reach victims and provide referrals, things like that. I think we all remember how when things were moving to a virtual environment, like school was moving virtual, courts were moving to a virtual environment, how that really impacted individuals. We found that that type of transition to fully remote services were hugely impactful on service provision as well. 

Additionally, businesses that did not necessarily provide victim services, but were closed as a result of the pandemic, were impacting victim service providers. And that's because these businesses were ones that were providing support to victim service providers or providing other basic needs to individuals regardless of whether or not they had experienced a crime. So, things like homeless shelters or food banks or places of employment for victims. This meant that victim service providers were stepping in to fill these gaps with things like housing assistance, cash assistance, providing food, for example. One respondent in rural Texas noted, “But we did, I think, have to take more of the burden to give direct services to our clients, whereas maybe we would refer them out previously. We didn’t ever stop in-person services, but a lot of other agencies around us did,” because these victim service providers were essential workers. They were continuing to work when other businesses were closed, and thus were filling in gaps that they maybe did not expect to before. This type of stepping in required really creative and flexible problem solving from victim service providers, so we heard things from agencies like public transportation closures meant that they couldn't give out bus vouchers the way that they had previously, or the buses were running on such an adjusted schedule that it didn't make sense to hand out those vouchers anymore. So, they quickly transitioned to providing vouchers for rideshares like Ubers and Lyft, when they had the funding to be able to do that. Other respondents shared how they drove victims to their appointments or to different engagements in like an agency van, even in the height of the pandemic, when folks were really concerned about that social distancing. 

We also heard from a shelter that needed to kind of abruptly provide a remote schooling environment for the children who were residing at the shelter during that time. That had huge implications on network connectivity requirements, providing technology to those youth, and having an adult in this faux classroom. So there were all of these new challenges that were being presented and needing to be really quickly addressed, even though there were no materials or guidebook or things like that. We heard all of these different creative solutions. 

Now, simultaneously not only were folks’ abilities to provide typical services and these additional services impacted by the pandemic, but the actual violence experienced by their clients looked different too. We know that gender-based violence is often an under-reported crime in official crime statistics. We found that official crime patterns were not reflecting the demand for gender-based violence services during this time period either. While there were some participating agencies that reported this very short-lived drop in demand for services, the folks that we spoke with overwhelmingly reported an increase in client needs that persisted for years after the onset of the pandemic. I heard both Janine and Ginger describe this during their opening remarks. Victim service providers reported seeing increases in the needs of intimate partner violence in particular, which they attributed to the isolation from both stay-at-home policies, but also loss of work and those other environmental strains that were coming up for both victims and perpetrators. Victim service providers also saw an increase in the level of violence that was happening at home. So previously, if somebody who was experiencing intimate partner violence might reach out to a domestic violence agency, there might be this time period where they could engage in safety planning or kind of talk through things a little bit differently. However, the violence was increasing in such a severe way and was really exacerbated that it made it completely unsafe for so many people to stay at home and attempt a safety plan and find ways to work through it in the short term before they were able to leave. One victim service provider from rural Massachusetts stated, “The physical violence aspect. What we’re seeing women come in with is so brutal that there are clients that are coming in that have to have hospital stays before they’re even able to be discharged to come to us. So we’re seeing a different level of brutality. The same thing around sexual assault, it's just the brutality that people are enacting on each other is different than what we were seeing pre-COVID.”

DR. REBECCA PFEFFER: I'll share our select findings from the second research question here, which was more about how the pandemic changed victim service provider service delivery models, and to what extent those changes have been successful or sustained in the long term. What we were interested in was whether services were suspended, adapted, or continued as normal. First, this isn't an all-encompassing list of services that we inquired about, but these are sort of the top ones that came up or the most frequently reported in each of these categories of service delivery. I think Hannah explained why some of these findings look the way they do. So with the closures of certain institutions like courts, with hospitals being closed to non-essential visitors, and schools being closed, a lot of these types of services necessarily were either halted or suspended. Things like, of course, school-based trainings, legal advocacy and accompaniment was suspended during the pandemic, but some of these things were suspended permanently while other things were temporarily suspended and then were resumed either in person or in a hybrid modality. Then some things were adopted permanently, but then again went back to the delivery model that they had prior, and some were adapted permanently. Then of course some services continued as usual, so just a quick note that these percentages that you see here are based on only those who responded as providing those services, not the entire sample of agencies. So, for example, of the 23 agencies that reported providing mental health services, only one reported that this service was suspended permanently. 

We wanted to understand, so we asked these questions on our survey to sort of get a sense of what are the types of services that did experience any sort of service disruption. Then we used our interviews to really understand a little bit more context as to why, and why these things looked the way they did. You can see the services that continued as normal make a lot of sense. Hotlines don't require an in-person interaction, transitional housing for the most part continued as normal and then providing information and referrals did. Mental health services and legal assistance were suspended permanently at a rate higher than other types of service disruptions or changes. That probably has to do with staffing changes that happened as a result of the pandemic. These other types of services represent those that had some sort of adaptation that was then either sustained or not. To understand that, we looked a little bit further, so I want to share some other changes that we learned about to service delivery. 

Hannah sort of spoke to this earlier, but one thing that we found was that nearly one-third of our survey sample reported that they needed to add additional services once the COVID pandemic began, including more intensive case management services, so what people were needing during their case management meetings, and the types of services that they needed changed. And that they were having to provide more housing support services, more cash assistance, and food distribution. This is sometimes for agencies that didn't necessarily provide any of those things or some of those things prior to the pandemic. But those were sort of the rising and preeminent needs of their clients during that time. Although these agencies have been prepared for and were used to providing support specific to these forms of victimization, they didn't necessarily have the infrastructure in place or the funding structures in place at the beginning of the pandemic to meet these expanded client needs. But they were really creative about being able to adapt to meet these needs, and to work with their funders and funding agencies to be able to meet those client needs. We had a survey respondent describe that they also saw a decrease in other agencies providing care, which meant that their crisis line was busier with both survivors calling and people who didn't necessarily need the supports of this crisis line, but they were calling for other types of social support because these other community agencies may have been closed. So, their own client needs were deeper and broader, but then our respondents were also receiving additional inquiries from other people that were outside the normal scope of service provision that they provided. They were really trying to respond to this community need. 

One of the major themes that we found that is probably not surprising to anyone on this webinar is just that most of these victim service provider agencies that we spoke with, and that we heard from our web survey had to embrace virtual modalities. Most of these victim service providers did not have an option for virtual client engagement prior to the pandemic. Almost all had to modernize their technology and adopt these new practices to engage with clients across different types of virtual platforms throughout the pandemic. This was a challenge, and Hannah I think alluded to this earlier as well, a lot of these victim service provider agencies didn't necessarily have the technology infrastructure that they needed to support this type of victim engagement particularly with regard to things like security and maintaining confidentiality, and establishing protocols and processes to ensure that that confidentiality could be met and sustained both on the client side and on their side. So they needed to make sure that all their staff had access to the technology that they needed, but also that clients did. And this was a process that took time, and there was often a period between when the pandemic first started, and when there was a recognition that everyone was going to be working from home and not just for two weeks, but for a sustained amount of time before they had sort of their permanent technology solutions in place. A lot of agencies reported sort of having to adopt these good enough practices just to keep things afloat until they could figure out these secure reliable technology platforms to be able to continue providing services, and then they also had to train their staff to be able to do so. So, there was a lot of creativity, a lot of learning, and a lot of reliance on technology experts that they maybe hadn't engaged with very much or very often before to be able to make these shifts. But we heard so many stories of commitment and persistence and resilience in the victim service providers who participated in this study. As a result, even when the public health restrictions were lifted, most agencies kept these virtual service delivery options at least for some client services. That is something we wanted to understand was where there are some cases, some instances, some types of services that were more suited to this virtual environment than others, and what did that look like, or were there some types of clients that were not necessarily as successfully engaged over a virtual environment? And what were sort of the pros and cons of those tradeoffs? 

So, we learned that the ability to provide either virtual or hybrid services to clients allowed victim service provider agencies to serve new clientele or to serve their existing clients in new ways. They describe specific client populations that seem to really benefit from virtual service availability, including people who'd experienced intimate partner violence or human trafficking who are still living with their abusers and needed assistance with safety planning, but couldn't necessarily leave their home to come into the service provider office and do that work. We also heard that people with disabilities or mobility issues were better supported by just having the option of hybrid or virtual appointments and assistance. Of course, people who are immunocompromised, people who had children without reliable access to childcare, this was especially acute of course during the pandemic when childcare was closed for a certain period of time, daycares were closed, schools were closed. Clients without access to transportation, that remains an issue for a lot of people but it was heightened when public transportation was curtailed during the pandemic, and for clients outside of an organization's immediate area. Some of our interviewees spoke about some clients who were mobile and seemed to move and didn't have stable housing, could still engage in virtual service delivery if they were able to, no matter where they were. So that was helpful for that group of victims as well. Here's a quote from someone from rural Massachusetts who said, "I've noticed that implementing virtual therapeutic sessions for families has worked very much. We found that sometimes the survivor’s still living with their perpetrator and this is the best way for them to actually do a virtual therapeutic session because they're still at home. And if the person's not there, they're able to do it and feel somewhat safe at the moment. A lot of survivors if they're still living at home with the perpetrator, they're not able to leave and the access to transportation is limited. So we definitely still, to this day, incorporate a hybrid model because we still want survivors to feel that we're providing that option.” 

There were of course challenges to offering virtual services, particularly we heard that virtual services were really difficult with very young children. People often said children ages 5 and younger were just really hard to engage in a virtual environment. And then that specific client populations including older clients, and in one site, someone spoke about undocumented clients just not wanting to engage in a virtual format. Of course, this makes sense, the way survivors experience victimization, the way survivors prefer help-seeking is diverse and there's no one-size-fits-all model of service provision that is appropriate for everyone. This is sort of a summary of what we found, and I hope it is reflective of most experiences here. But as Hannah said, we're really open to hearing about experiences that are different from what we've heard, and what we've built this report around. 

But services that seem to be best suited for in-person include shelter, obviously, legal and medical accompaniment. We heard about some shifts to hybrid accompaniment that happened at some point in the pandemic that seemed to just not work as well as in-person accompaniment. Resource provision trainings with youth and schools or detention settings, and then support services or group counseling tends to be better in person. Services that seemed best for remote modalities were hotlines, information and referrals in crisis scenarios. Then services that seem to work in a hybrid modality were intake counseling, case management, trainings with adults, community engagement. These are things where the client was given the agency to decide what worked best for them. Overarchingly, agencies that participated in this study really wanted to increase that choice for their clients. 

We also looked at the impacts on staff, so the impacts of COVID on the staff who are working in these agencies. One of the things that we found was that victim service provider personnel weren't recognized as essential workers during the onset of the pandemic, but their work remained essential. We heard from staff who described feeling really scared to be driving to work at a shelter during the beginning of the pandemic when there were stay-at-home orders in place because they weren't officially recognized as essential workers, but somebody needed to be there at the shelter to provide services. Additionally, we heard experiences about just a need for more staff, challenges with staff retention during the pandemic, and then of course as Hannah already talked about, these challenges navigating client relationships and autonomy with these mandates required to curtail and contain the virus. There was also increased attention to staff morale during the pandemic, so in addition to trying to really respond to the needs of clients and the changing needs of clients, agencies were also very aware that their staff had increased in changing needs both as staff members of these victim service provider agencies providing these essential services, but also humans who are navigating the pandemic just on their own with their own families and childcare needs, and all of the other challenges that came with the pandemic for all of us. One respondent described how, “My staff was scared, you know? I could tell the staff was scared. I had a mom that was really sick at the time, and I didn't get to see her because of my job, you know? And it made it really difficult.” Everyone was sort of navigating the pandemic, but also navigating it as someone that was still an essential worker in a lot of cases. 

We also found that there were some challenges around staffing, especially when services had been either halted or suspended or the modalities were changing because people's roles were changing. Sometimes the way that agencies try to retain staff when certain services were stopped for a long time was to pivot the role of certain staff to doing something totally different. So, we heard a lot about staff who usually provided these specialized in-person services being diverted to hotline response, and they didn't necessarily have the training or the supports that they needed to suddenly be doing that for so much of their time. There were increased mental health challenges and burnout among staff. Then, again, this tension between the critical nature of their work and their own fears about safety for themselves and their families during the pandemic. One survey respondent said, “We continue to have high levels of turnover, burnout, and transition during and since the pandemic. And even with increased pay and benefits, it's overwhelming.” 

Some of the things that agencies did to respond to these impacts on staff were to increase salaries for their staff, both their existing staff and newly hired staff. Some offered hazard pay or stipends, particularly agencies that were able to offer some staff remote work during the pandemic but required other staff to still work in person. They found that providing hazard pay for the staff that was still coming in in person was important. Some implemented permanent hybrid work options for new and existing staff and used that as a way to recruit new staff. Some adopted a four-day work week as a way to help staff balance their work with the rest of their life. Then there's some other things that we heard about in terms of extending or adapting benefit options and trying to maintain staff morale during the pandemic and beyond. We asked on our survey, we asked respondents what they were most proud of in terms of how their agency had responded to the pandemic. This agency respondent said, “I am most proud of the resiliency of our advocates and clients during a difficult season. We had a mutual understanding for one another that we were trying to make things work and had to think outside of the box to make things happen. And I'm proud of the innovative ways that we tried to meet our clients' needs, which we think captures what we heard really well.”

DR. HANNAH FEENEY: And also, we summarized the proudest moments and the greatest challenges in a separate brief that we'd be happy to share so you can see some of that motivation there. I'm going to transition us to talking about some of the recommendations that we developed through the studies. These were inspired by the findings and also recommendations that folks provided directly to us during our interviews. We'll kick things off by talking about recommendations for agency leadership. Just kind of pulling back, the findings in this report are relevant for various forms of service disruption. So it could be of another public health emergency like COVID-19, ideally, not. But there are other forms of service disruptions, like natural disasters or really abrupt staff turnover, unexpected staff turnover, or other crises. These findings could be applicable to those moments but also to the secondary and longer-lasting challenges that have occurred as a result of these primary crises. For example, the need for stable housing remains. We really haven't solved that problem yet in most communities. The effects of these crises are lingering, long-lasting, and victim service providers really play an important role in responding to those long-term care needs. So, what do we do? What's the answer? We don't have all of the answers but we do have some recommendations. 

As noted, starting with the agency leadership, we really encourage agency leadership to consider flexible options for staff, so by considering ways to increase the sustainability of processes through these kinds of challenges. Rebecca was just talking about how at least one agency that we talked to shifted a lot of staff to working on their hotline, so those folks could remain employed during the pandemic, and to address the increased hotline utilization that was happening. Ideally, now we know that those kinds of shifts might happen, all staff could be trained on how to answer hotline or crisis calls, even if that activity is not a part of their typical work duties. Then ideally, we're also supporting staff through that by providing them with hazard pay, self-care time, and some of those other options that Rebecca just described. Additionally, we suggest flexible options for clients, too. Our study found that there were many client populations that benefitted from having the flexibility of remote services like individuals with disabilities, but also study respondents believed that offering clients a choice in how they receive services was important. Most victim service providers are finding ways to provide flexible options for clients because that is a trauma-informed way to do this work, and I think the pandemic highlighted a new variety of ways that we could be providing that kind of flexibility, and additional choices that we could be giving to clients. 

A third recommendation we have here is incorporating that tech expertise. Many agencies that we spoke with or surveyed reported having insufficient technology to handle the transition to a remote world during the pandemic. Most victim service providers did not have somebody who specialized in technology on staff which, I think, is unsurprising. Most victim service providers do not require cutting-edge technology to be able to do their work. But the pandemic really highlighted how it is important to keep these processes up to date, ensure that systems are secure and adaptable to our ever-changing climate here. So consider prioritizing an expert on technology on an agency's advisory board. You don't have to bring somebody on staff, but could somebody be on your board or is there another connection in your community that you could make that could help ensure that technology-related contingency plans and policies and protocols are kept up to date? 

Next recommendation we have here is ensuring and encouraging hybrid options for staff. This feels a little unsurprising given everything we've talked about today. Many of those folks we interviewed talked about the benefits of being able to work from home at least part-time when possible, so increased time for self-care, decreased time commuting. I think, again, this is pretty unsurprising but it did feel really empowering for staff to be able to have these choices. Some folks are going to come in all the time and some are going to want to work from home more often than not. But what is really important here is that other industries are embracing this hybrid or remote work environment and other industries that pay more than victim service providers are often able to. So, victim service providers may need to consider maintaining these hybrid work options as a way to retain and attract and maintain a competitive workforce. One thing we hope agency leadership will consider is new data metrics. This study found that shifting victim services resulted in more victim-centered and creative approaches to providing victims with services. However, those changes are not necessarily reflected in the performance metrics that we are often asked to collect and report through our typical funding streams and our typical reporting metrics. Thinking about something like shifting from providing bus passes to providing rideshare, you might be reporting out the same exact number of clients that received transportation support. But the actual experience on the victim’s behalf may be really instrumentally different, really effectively different, and their experience of receiving services might look different. So in that, to be able to continue to provide that kind of service and obtain funding for that kind of service, we need to find ways to capture what that experience looks like in real time, so generating these new types of metrics or ways to think about reporting client services. 

The final recommendation we have for agency leadership is leveraging those existing networks. Thinking back to the pandemic, all of these new networks and ways of exchanging information and communicating were created, these collaborative meetings or resource fairs, or emergency groups that were coming together and meeting weekly. Now, we don't need to continue to do that in such an intense way but there are likely lower burden efforts that could be maintained over time so that way when future service disruptions do happen or there are some other kinds of critical need, we're not starting all over. It's like, “Okay, we need to get that group back together in-person.” So, maintaining those relationships and existing networks is really critical.

DR. REBECCA PFEFFER: We also had some recommendations for policymakers and funders, which I'll go through quickly because I'd like to turn things over to our colleagues. But, first, for policymakers, we recommend establishing the essential worker status for victim service provider staff. This will ensure that they are eligible for things like hazard pay and are eligible for access to things like PPE and other provisions that were made available to essential workers that also people at victim service provider agencies are able to access. 

Second, we wanted to make sure that we're encouraging policymakers to include victim service providers in municipal crisis planning so that their needs can be represented and that when their needs change or shift, they're already at the table and able to voice what their needs are and able to represent their clients and the experiences that clients are having. 

And, finally, we recommend that policymakers anticipate the underreporting of crime and really lean in and turn to their partners at victim service provider agencies to solicit information about what the reality of these crimes and this form of victimization is on the ground in times of crisis. 

For funders, we found that flexible funding was something that participating agencies talked about as essential. So just developing simple and flexible systems for funding programs and also being flexible about reporting requirements during times of fluctuation and service provision due to these types of service disruptions. We also encourage funders to be flexible about client engagement and eligibility. It seems like many of the service providers that responded to this study or participated in this study experienced some fluctuation in who is turning to them for services and that eligibility may need to be considered or loosened a little bit during certain times of crisis. 

Then, finally, participants talked about how they received these COVID dollars and were able to change services or rise to the occasion and provide services that were badly needed. Those dollars went away and they went away without scaling down, and they could have used time to plan for sustainability as funding for these crisis-related measures were ending. We'd like to thank you so much for listening to this presentation and we're really looking forward to hearing from our colleagues who are going to share their on-the-ground experience now. Thank you.

OLIVIA STORZ: Great. Thank you so much, Rebecca and Hannah. I really appreciate your time and recommendations. And thank you as well to the National Institute of Justice for investing so heavily in this important research. I do see one question flagged for these wonderful presenters, and we are going to do a broader Q&A with all panelists towards the end of our time together. My name is Olivia Storz and I am a Program Analyst in the Performance, Assessment, Research, and Evaluation Unit at the Office on Violence Against Women. And as Rebecca mentioned throughout their presentation, the pandemic reveals the commitment and resilience of many service providers. At OVW, we have the great privilege of providing funding to many victim service providers across the country. So now to give us some additional insight into the COVID-19 pandemic, as it is both lived and felt, in addition to the wonderful data that our RTI colleagues shared, I'm excited to invite Joyce and Kelly to join me in discussing a few questions. Welcome, Joyce, and welcome, Kelly. Thank you. Then a final note, victim service providers often face secondary and vicarious trauma through their work. We know that during the pandemic, this was compounded by illness, economic insecurity, and in various forms of uncertainty. I think about my time as a direct service provider and I know this all too well. The pandemic may be difficult to speak about so as we have our discussion today, please be sure to engage in a way that you can and take good care of yourself as we think about this difficult time. 

So welcome, Joyce and Kelly. Thank you so much for your time. My first question for you is just tell us about the work that your organization does and what do victim services really look like in your community? Joyce, I don't know if you want to go first.

HUEIJOU JOYCE KAO: Of course. Thank you, Olivia, and thank you, everyone. It's an honor to be here to talk about our service and what we do. To start, so my name is Joyce. I work for Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence. So, our agency like our name serves survivors within AAPI community. So, when we are working with our clients, we are very focused on providing language as well as a handful of appropriate services to the survivors. So, most of our staff speak another Asian language and they're able to communicate with survivors in any language that they feel most comfortable and most fluent with. We do holistic case management so that means, starting from safety planning to public assistance to housing, shelter, and legal service that will help with all that we can do and direct resources. Thank you.

OLIVIA STORZ: Well, thank you, Joyce. 

KELLY MOE LITKE: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for having me. I want to make the important distinction that I come into this space as a statewide coalition, so not doing the direct, on-the-ground response work that we've heard about in the research that Joyce was talking about. Rather we are the state sexual assault coalition in Wisconsin. We work with the more than 70 sexual assault service providers throughout the state who are providing victim services and prevention and who are doing that during a really challenging time of the pandemic. So, we provide training and technical assistance and support to those programs in a lot of different ways and evolving ways as we saw during the pandemic as well. We're really happy to be here and look forward to the conversation.

OLIVIA STORZ: Great. Thank you so much, Kelly. Okay. So, Joyce, what do you think we may forget when we talk about the pandemic and its impact on victims? And, in particular, your organization works on serving Asian victims in a culturally specific manner. Can you tell us a little bit about why it's so important to recognize the disparate impact of the pandemic on victim services and how different victims experience the pandemic differently?

HUEIJOU JOYCE KAO: Thank you for the questions. First, I want to talk about the language barrier the system has set up for the survivor to reach out to services. I think it got especially more difficult for them during the pandemic. One is because there are so many announcements, so many changes, so many new things, policy coming up every single day during the pandemic, especially in the initial phases. We have to say whenever we see something, most likely it is not being translated and language support is not provided to survivors to understand what is going on and what can be provided to them. Later on, after we were trying to push and push, we see some of those things have been translated but only partially. So, what we're seeing is if the page is being translated for some public system, the application is not translated or the application is translated but you still have to answer in English. So, with that being said, I wanted to show is that our survivors are mostly immigrants who do not speak full English as their primary language. They will not be able to, most likely, do this by themselves. But what we heard that, in the community, it is either the market price is $50 per application for them to ask someone to translate for them or if they're brave enough to call the number to ask them for language support, it's even two hours of wait, for them to stay online, wait for them to connect you to an interpreter for them to reach out to a representative. So, we know by just saying that, being an immigrant and being an ESL individual is costly. It could be monetary cost, or it could be timewise.

We have tested that ourselves is that we have clients who call when they're trying to apply for unemployment insurance. So, when they dial that they need interpretation service, they waited on the line for two hours and got disconnected after. When we have an advocate call them who can serve as an interpreter, the wait time has a significant decrease to a quarter of the time to get through to interpreters. So just by saying that, I want to show you this is the barrier that the system has set up for us to be more difficult to empower our client to be where we want them to be. 

The second thing is initially when everything is going to be virtual, like previously mentioned in the research, we need to also recognize that having technology and knowing how to utilize that is a privilege. Many of our clients do not have this privilege to either know how to use it or do not have the proper gadget to use. So many of our clients have to struggle all the time when they do not have any job and/or any income. They need to struggle or find the low-cost, second-hand cellphone that will be able to go online and try to figure out how to fill out information by a very small screen on their cellphone. And this is very difficult. And on top of that, if you ever need to go on any meetings, trainings, or hearings virtually, none of those are easy for them. So those are two things. 

The third thing I want to mention is that during COVID, it's very unfortunate that we have seen some situations in my community, the AAPI community, sometimes we’re seen as a scapegoat for what happened during that time. And we have seen in the news and in our community from people we know, their hate turns to physical action to the people that we know of. I want to address that those actions are not just the action by itself. It may seem as a rare incident or it may seem as a single accident, but what it does is it causes a butterfly effect to our clients as well as our staff. We have heard many of our clients let us know that they decided to not want to leave the relationship at that moment because they feel the environment overall is very hostile to them and might as well stay in their apartment knowing that abuse will continue from the abuser but at least it's abuse they know of.

So, I was thinking that the incident that happened within our communities are not only to our client. I think for everyone who has ever been a direct service provider that you have noticed one of the primary emotions that the client experiences when they decide to leave a relationship, especially with a minor/child, is guilt. They experience a lot of guilt of should I take my child with me, leaving this family to an unknown situation and environment, knowing that I'm not so sure if this at all is a good decision. And with what's happening in the news, what's happening in the community, it becomes even more. They become fearful if they wanted to take their child with them to a shelter or to any other places because they do not know if they will be treated fairly. So that is one. 

The second one I also want to mention is that effect is not only to the client but also to staff. We have staff, although during the pandemic, most of our staff are able to work remote. We have our staff in the shelter are required to work in-person every single time. So, they're still coming into the office. We have staff who are walking on the street and found someone across the street pointing a gun to them. That's someone they don't really know and is a complete stranger and the whole feeling is just fear. The fear that you have of what's going to happen to you just by walking on the street. So, like the research mentioned, we have spent a lot of time talking to not just clients but, at this time, staff about safety planning. The whole situation is very, very difficult. I think the cherry on top is that even though we know what happened and our staff is trying to reach out to the police, and they spend three calls and not able to reach out to the right department or right person to deal with that. Knowing that our staff speaks perfect English and knows the system pretty well, and even that, it seems many roadblocks for the whole process. So, in short, I think that's what we have observed in that long and yet short three, four years. Again, I'm grateful to have to share this with you all.

OLIVIA STORZ: Thank you so much for sharing that, Joyce. I think there's so much to lift up in what you just shared. I'm just sitting with the image of that service provider on the street and feeling very angry and very frustrated by the system's response to that. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you so much for your work during the pandemic and during this rise in anti-Asian hate crimes that we know happened across the country. I think the context of not only how that affects victim service providers but also creates conditions that make it more difficult for victims is really important torecognize. So thank you so much for sharing that. 

Kelly, you also have an interesting perspective coming from a state coalition. I would love to know of any policies or programs that helped your coalition members and clients of your member programs cope or navigate their paths during this period. I know that you all have a really high-level understanding of what's happening across the state. Would love to hear any lessons learned or any policies or programs that were really helpful.

KELLY MOE LITKE: We heard great recommendations from the research as well, but the clear guidance and flexibility and adaptability across the board is so important. Because it can't just be the programs that are willing to be adaptable and flexible to the emerging needs at these challenging times, but it has to be the support that they receive both from coalitions and funders. So, we all have to be willing to move and listen and center those needs and really be responsive in that evolving time. I think it was a little unique in the interpersonal violence field to embrace technology. We tend to have a little bit of distrust in our field around technology because it's so often used to harm, whether we're talking about sexual harassment, whatever it is. As a field, we were maybe a little behind in our use and embracing of technology. As well as all of the confidentiality concerns and all of the things that come into safety in use of technology even in the services that we provide. So I think this was a quick nudge to move folks in the direction of something we probably should have been doing all along. The research showed as well that for some survivors with disabilities, survivors with access issues, that providing virtual and remote services was a really effective mode of service delivery. I don't know how long it would have taken us to get there had we not been sort of forced to do that. 

The other thing I think that was highlighted in the research and is really important to remember is that increase for services. While so many industries and folks were scaling things back, this service industry was being inundated. Inundated because of the fact that new trauma can impact and bring up past trauma even when those things are completely unrelated. Sexual violence and a pandemic on the surface don't overlap or have any interaction, but for survivors and for the people that have experienced trauma, any sort of disruption in how we move about our lives, how we interact with others, whether or not we're “safe” at home. That messaging was really harmful to a lot of survivors who do not feel and are not safe at home, and so it did increase those calls for services. It's important to also remember that that continues. Because while we are moving through the pandemic or we're post-pandemic, whatever language we're using, the impact of that social isolation can still come out. I know I'm even reluctant when I'm in crowds. I experienced my community differently than I did before the pandemic. So, we're still seeing that social anxiety, that fear still playing out for survivors and so that increase in request for services has also sustained. It's not like we saw this big peak and then we are hearing that it's trailed off. That's really stayed at a high level for service providers and it's also happening at a time of funding instability and things like that. 

So, programs are navigating a lot, not only as we exit out of whatever post-pandemic means but also what they're going to continue with services, how they're going to continue, what that looks like. Looking at those policies and practices and being open and flexible and supportive. I love some of the examples that have already been shared about how funders have been supportive of that, because I think that is what is most important when we're dealing with the unknown. I mean, for many of us, this was really an unknown situation. I just want to elevate as well and thank Joyce for talking about disparate impact, because I think that is the other piece that was really highlighted during this time. Not only the disparate impact on, of course, survivors but the story you shared about staff and the racism that folks experienced. I think that's really important, whether we're talking about that happened but also what we'll do next, is really centering that in all that we do and the decisions that we make.

OLIVIA STORZ: Thank you so much for that, Kelly. I couldn't agree more. It's really important to note that for so many survivors, for so many staff, particularly those with disabilities or medical comorbidities, the pandemic isn't over. For so many of us that experienced trauma during the pandemic, its effects linger. That's a really important to flag. This leads me to my next question, which is, unfortunately, we know that disasters and emergencies are inevitable and more are coming. What do you need and then what do your communities need to prepare for this uncertain future? 

HUEIJOU JOYCE KAO: Thank you. What I could share is, I think, a lot of challenging roadblocks we have experienced during COVID. It is not unique that only happened during COVID. It happened before that. It's just the pandemic kind of magnified the issue and become more serious because what happened. If the language support and language resources had been considered something that should be provided, what we have experienced wouldn't be as serious as when we experienced in the COVID time. If all the frontline staff know how to utilize and were encouraged to utilize language line beforehand and they know how to do that, we wouldn't experience what we have. Hate crime has always existed. If all the departments involved knew how to advocate for hate crime or deal with hate crime and how to take a case and how to follow up with a case, we wouldn't feel so lost during this time. I think a lot of things that we have seen, we have actually talked about it beforehand, but it was just not being brought into attention. I feel like we just need to really look into what happened and now seeing back to see what can be really implemented in daily practice and really look into the detail and enforce it. Thank you.

OLIVIA STORZ: Thank you so much, Joyce. Kelly.

KELLY MOE LITKE: That's the challenging thing is this was a pandemic and we're talking about all different types of emergencies that could happen. You're never going to have the exact plan in place for every little thing. And as Joyce pointed out, these weren't necessarily new problems. They were problems that were highlighted or exacerbated by the pandemic. So, I think adjusting policies and practices to allow for flexibility and the responsiveness, and that can happen at all levels. For local programs, the easiest place to start might be formalizing some of the things that worked well. We did learn some things and I think the research does a good job of highlighting those examples. It might be as simple as, “We're going to purchase laptops instead of desktops the next time we upgrade our technology.” Things like that. So, what are the things that we can constantly be upgrading and changing and adapting to. 

But, also, I think it's really about that flexibility and adaptations that we make on the fly. That is a part of our work. People that work in this field are really great at that. They're innovative. They're creative. They're all of that. And so really embracing that and just knowing like we are good at some of these. Even if it's unknown, we have that in our skills and if we have that in our policies and practices too, whether it is a natural disaster or a pandemic or whatever the situation unfortunately is, like we have the ability and the skills to do that. That does also start with funders who are willing to be responsive to the needs. We know that there were additional protections and things that were available to some communities, but there were still barriers that others were facing in accessing that, whether it was because of fear, whether it was because of just the additional barriers, language, immigration, all of the things. So, I think as much as we can, being adaptive and responsive to the emerging needs as they come.

OLIVIA STORZ: Thank you both. I'm just nodding my head. As a funder sitting with the complexity of what you've shared here, I so appreciate your time. We're coming up towards the end of our time together, but I just want to turn it over to you two to see if you any last words to share in this space. And it's okay if you don't, but if you have anything left to share here.

KELLY MOE LITKE: It goes to maybe what I was just saying about like the responsiveness and the adaptations in our work. Don't get me wrong, Rebecca and Hannah. I love the research. I'm a research nerd. I love all of that and I don't want to minimize the research, but I think what the research really showed us is to encourage us to listen. To listen to communities and starting with the communities that we know are going to be hit harder. As Joyce so rightly put, that's not a surprise. That's not new. We know the desperate impact. While the research does a really good job of pointing out what some of the changes were, what some of the changes worked, we were hearing that. We were hearing that in 2020 from people on the ground, in programs and communities. So we need to really listen to the impact, to the needs, and to the stories. We don't need to wait for the research to come out for us to adapt our services and adapt to the evolving needs of the people we're trying to serve. Hearing the research and hearing Joyce, like I'm just thinking, "We know how to do this." We have to start by listening and really listening to those most impacted, and we were hearing that from the very early days of the pandemic. We were hearing about the racism. We were hearing about who was dying. We knew what the impact was from the very early days. So, I think we need to do a better job of that regardless of the emergency that we find ourselves in.

HUEIJOU JOYCE KAO: Thank you, Kelly. And I just wanted to say I agree what Kelly says so much because that's what I was hoping to do. In the beginning of the pandemic, I think that we have appreciated the flexibility that we have been given, as well as we were asked to attend many meetings to listen to what really, we need. Because I agree with what Kelly was saying, is that I think my staff, the frontline staff are the ones who actually know what our client needs the best, and they see what is needed. They actually have a solution, which they are doing by themselves. But if we can have that voice delivered for policy and even have more trust in knowing that the frontline staff or the rest of the organization know what they're doing and just trying to listen, I think one thing I feel like is the most helpful thing I have encountered and appreciate throughout this time. So thank you. And thank you, Kelly.

OLIVIA STORZ: Thank you both so much for your time today and for your work in your community. It's incredibly important and we appreciate it. I'll just close, before I hand it over to my NIJ colleagues, by just sharing that we're really grateful to NIJ for their partnership on this webinar, as well as RTI. OVW is also working with our federal partners to ensure that we think about survivors and victim services as we prepare for and respond to emergencies and disasters. For example, our colleagues have joined an advisory committee at FEMA to prepare guidance and recommendations for how to best address GBV and victim services, particularly for marginalized and underserved communities. So, we look forward to continuing this work with our federal partners. And I'm going to hand it over to my colleague Erica at NIJ.

ERICA HOWELL: Thank you, Olivia, and thank you, Kelly and Joyce, for a wonderful discussion. Before we close out, I will open it up for Q&A. We did have one come in during your presentation, Rebecca and Hannah. The question says, “Are there any agencies that are maintaining virtual services as best practice to their communities?” I know you all touched a bit about virtual services towards the end of your presentation, so is there anything else you would like to add here?

DR. HANNAH FEENEY: I don't think so. I think that we kind of covered that. I don't know that we heard of any agencies that were exclusively transitioning to virtual services a hundred percent, even after service or social distancing limitation requirements releases. I think many folks chose to go back in person to some degree. But many of the agencies that we heard from did maintain virtual service modalities for, at least, some of their services and that seemed a pretty common experience.

KELLY MOE LITKE: I would just echo that, that I think people are trying to find that balance of a hybrid. Even as an employer, we're trying to do that, figure out what that looks like. I hope so. I know it's happening, and I think it needs to happen more because I do think we need to embrace the technology a little bit more in our field and I think it did eliminate some barriers for folks to access. I know people had really successful support groups virtually and I know folks are trying to continue with that, especially when there's great distances that people have to travel. It does eliminate some of that. I know people are doing it and I hope that they're exploring how they can do it more and continue it.

ERICA HOWELL: Great. Thank you. Again, if you have a question, feel free to enter that in the Q&A box. I don't see anything, Stacy. Am I missing anything?

STACY LEE: I don't see anything either.

ERICA HOWELL: Okay.

STACY LEE: Do you want to wait another minute or so if anything comes in?

ERICA HOWELL: I'll wait one more minute. Before we close out, I just want to on behalf of NIJ thank everybody for joining us this afternoon. Thank you to our amazing presenters for the work that you continue to do and for speaking with us today. Please everybody stay updated on our events at nij.ojp.gov. There you can find out about upcoming webinars, our open solicitations, our current grants, and also you'll find information about our upcoming NIJ Research Conference, which is in September. If there are no more questions, Stacy, I think we can close.

STACY LEE: On behalf of our panelists, thank you for joining today's webinar. This will end our presentation.