What it Means to be a Hospital Advocate
Since 2001, Women’s Crisis Center has provided 24/7/365 responsiveness to hospital emergency departments throughout our 13-county service area. Each time a victim-survivor of domestic violence, rape, or sexual assault presents for care in an emergency department within our service area, Women’s Crisis Center dispatches a professionally-trained advocate—staff (in Northern Kentucky and Buffalo Trace) or volunteer (in Northern Kentucky).
During regular business hours, Women’s Crisis Center staff members are on-call and ready to meet victim-survivors of domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault in local hospital emergency departments. Evenings and weekends, however, are when our volunteer hospital-advocates’ skills and dedication truly shine.
Without our dedicated volunteers who give of their own time—both throughout an extensive training and continuing education process and during their monthly on-call shifts—such responsiveness would be impossible. Women’s Crisis Center volunteer hospital advocates come from all walks of life, and all experiences.
They are friends, mothers, sisters, professionals, social workers, retirees, students, activists, artists, and educators. Some are themselves past survivors of domestic violence, rape, or sexual assault; they are passionate about supporting people currently in crisis via empowerment-based, trauma-informed advocacy.
Our hospital advocates are unified in their belief that every victim-survivor deserves one-on-one support and attention while navigating the immediate aftermath of domestic violence, rape, or sexual assault. Our hospital advocates are the reason why Hope is Found Here.
Program-Specific Requirements
- Submission of Women’s Crisis Center Volunteer Application
- In-person interview
- Reference check
- Criminal background check
- Successful completion of 40-hour hospital advocacy training series (offered several times yearly)
- One-year minimum commitment to serving the agency as a hospital advocate
- Reliable transportation (via personal vehicle) to St. Elizabeth Hospital emergency departments within the agency’s service-area. These sites include:
- St. Elizabeth Covington
- St. Elizabeth Edgewood
- St. Elizabeth Florence
- St. Elizabeth Fort Thomas
- St. Elizabeth Grant County
- Availability for at least two on-call shifts per month
40-Hour Training
- Offered 3 times annually
- Required for new direct-service volunteers and new agency staff
- Classes conducted via 8 sessions in the evenings and on weekends within a given month
- Mark your calendars for our next 40-hour training series…
- Email erinnw@wccky.org for details.
- Click here to learn more about requirements of attending 40-Hour Training