NAPS Annual Conference 2024: New Innovative Peer Support Groups for Victims of Crime

One of the reasons to attend the annual meeting of the National Association of Peer Supporters (NAPS) is to hear about new innovations in the field.  People from around the country come to the meeting to present new services they are experimenting with and to share the successes and headaches they have experienced.  This can help you in many ways, including:

1.     You can ‘steal’ the idea and start providing that intervention in your work.  It is not really stealing, as they want you to spread the practice.

2.     You can avoid the headaches they’ve experienced.  Why waste time and energy finding out about challenges that others have already experienced?  Turn their pain into your gain by learning from their mistakes.

3.     You can learn about resources that others have found useful.  This can include money, potential partners, and strategies that you may need for your next idea.

4.     You can see others present their ideas.  You will have to present your ideas to other people, and you can learn a lot about how to present in ways that garner the most support from your audience.  Watching other presenters will prepare you for that.

At the 2024 NAPS Convention in Chicago, I attended just such a presentation.  This was a presentation on a new pilot program for peer support groups to help victims of crime by Ashtyn Guechler and Daniel Torrez of the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC).  They talked about a two-million-dollar grant that they are distributing to 10 new pilot sites who applied this year for funding to build a new peer support group for crime victims. 

Peer support groups for crime victims have been successful through the work of organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Parents of Murdered Children (POMC).   There are now opportunities to use peer support groups to benefit the much larger group of crime victims, many of whom suffer lasting psychological injury from their experience.

This NCVC grant was awarded to the 10 best proposals, and we heard that they selected a varied set of projects from around the US. These included new groups that focused on victims of specific crimes (e.g. sexual assault) and groups that are open to victims of any crime.  Some groups are virtual while others are in-person. Some use spiritually focused strategies for targeted cultural groups.  Others use languages other than English.

Hearing about this new area for peer support groups helped me think about the continued spread of peer support as a tool and the fact that there is new funding and support out there for new forms of support groups.  Hearing about the strategy the NCVC used to judge these proposals, made it clear that many more sites can develop fundable proposals.  The excitement in the audience was obvious when the presenters talked about the likelihood that they will be distributing additional funding this year to support even more new proposals. 

Kudos to the NCVC and the 10 funded sites for their innovation and their recognition of this important new application of peer support groups.  Kudos to the people in the audience who are clearly already thinking about what new ways they could devise peer support groups to better serve the large group of people with needs for peer support.

Seeing their work made me wonder what other unmet needs are there for new peer support groups?  There have to be many, given the growth in new applications that continue to be developed.  What existing peer support groups could benefit from special versions that include innovations like the forms funded by the NCVC.  What other funds are available to help us build new groups to help others?

DISCLOSURE: I have no financial tie to the National Association of Peer Supporters and no conflict of interest.  I have been a member since 2023.

KEY WORDS: Peer Support Groups, Peer Support Specialist, Innovation, NAPS