The Centers Against Abuse and Sexual Assault (CAASA) will be hosting a free Advocacy and Response training event in Orange City.
CAASA trains people to heal from and help others heal from sexual abuse. The organization is partnering with the Attorney General’s Office of Iowa to host an event providing free advocacy and response training. Stephanie Henrich, Executive Director for CAASA, describes their mission and the goal of the training.
“The mission is to help people be free of violence. And the most important thing I feel is that we need to be educated more to be able to help people in trauma. And this is a great way to not only collaborate, but to communicate, to have people from all over the surrounding northwest Iowa come to this training to meet other people.”
Henrich lays out the importance of training for the healing process.
“The more educated we are to help people and to give them resources, the better the outcome of their healing process. And so this is why training is absolutely so important. You know, we’re getting very experienced in our agencies due to all the training that we’re doing, because we’re seeing that the trauma and the mental health from a lot of these clients that we serve, we need to be better educated to be able to help them.”
During the program attendees will be trained to know how to respond to trauma physically and legally. Henrich lists some of the things people will be trained in.
“They’re going to do a strangulation, um, also training there and trauma informed care, which is so important in the line of work that we do for advocacy. Um. Two thirty six and two thirty eight protection orders, which is what we do all the time. So two thirty six is a domestic protection order and a. Two thirty six A is a sexual assault protection order. We do these almost every day with clients. Um, and it’s really good for people to know how to do them correctly.”
Event goers will also learn about the Iowa Divine Protection Order System which aims to let clients know of a perpetrators whereabouts.
“The perpetrator goes into the jail, and that client will find out every time they’re moved, if they get let out, if they bond out so they know for their safety what is going on.”
The event will be in the Prairie Winds Event Center in Orange City on October 29th from 9am to 3pm. CAASA is a nonprofit organization serving 19 counties across Northwest Iowa. You can register for the event online by clicking Here.
