An important resource and partner to the entire UW community, SafeCampus’s mission is to foster a safe and supportive UW community. The department strives to help faculty, staff and students prevent violence and be prepared to respond when it occurs. SafeCampus is a great partner to youth programs for consultations and violence prevention education.
The OYPC team interviewed SafeCampus Senior Violence Prevention & Response Specialist, Natalie Dolci, LICSW, who has been a part of the department for 2 years now.
Stronger Together – the SafeCampus team
Natalie is a licensed clinical social worker, and her background is working in survivor advocacy which is a large portion of the folks they serve. Natalie values the opportunities she has to to be trusted with disclosures and make sure survivors are getting connected to the right resources for their situation.
Although Natalie plays a crucial role on the SafeCampus team, she reminds us that it takes a village to make sure all needs are met. The SafeCampus team includes: Gillian Wickwire, Laura Fay, Paige Sechrest & three practicum students from the School of Social Work. Each person is crucial to ensuring that SafeCampus is able to support every individual in the UW community. Dr. Sechrest leads Prevention and Education work and Gillian, Natalie, and Laura are involved with direct services and consultations. Natalies shares that:
“It’s great to have a training and prevention arm in addition to a direct services arm because we can have an interplay between both sides of the program- people will be more inclined to talk to SafeCampus about concerns.”
When asked about SafeCampus’ greatest success, Natalie explains that in violence prevention work, it’s hard to measure success, because it is hard to prove the lack of something; how can we prove that violence didn’t happen? Although difficult, Natalie shares with us “something that can be measured is when SafeCampus has repeat callers and when they have people feel like they got something out of a consultation. I consider that to be a success story.”
Working with OYPC and the Youth at UW Network
As a campus resource, SafeCampus is available to work directly with youth programs as a consultation and thought partner. One area of particular collaboration is preventing, identifying and responding to behaviors of concern, actions which may endanger youth or otherwise merit supervisory intervention. At our February Summer Programs Planning meeting, SafeCampus helped youth programs process scenarios that might arise in youth programs and formulate responses. This is just one example of how partnership with SafeCampus can strengthen youth programs’ practices.
OYPC hopes to help bring more visibility to the full suite of services SafeCampus provides for our community. SafeCampus is more than a response mechanism – they are an integral part of the community and are an “always available” resource to all youth programs. Natalie describes how her team might support a youth program:
“A person might call us if someone is handling a sensitive and urgent case or if a roommate is in danger, or someone might call us about the safety of a minor situation – we might do consultation with callers if they are calling about a mandatory reporting situation and talking them through the “whether” and the “how” – how do we mitigate unintended consequences? And how do we engage in harm reduction to the best of our ability?”
In addition to partnering with youth programs, partnering with OYPC directly allows SafeCampus to close the loop or debrief in situations facilitated in Violence Prevention Assessment Team (VPAT) meetings. SafeCampus convenes VPAT meetings, attended by relevant campus partners, in situations where multidisciplinary coordination is needed, for example among SafeCampus, OYPC, Title IX, Emergency Management, and other entities.
Natalie shares that because community members want to learn about new policies on campus and keep each other up to date on new situations, SafeCampus always looks forward to multidisciplinary collaboration with new partners in order to make the most of everyone’s expertise.
The Future of SafeCampus and Identifying Gaps
SafeCampus is an accomplished department that has been serving and supporting the UW community since 2007, yet they continue to strengthen their involvement to be a greater resource for community members. Looking onward, SafeCampus, alongside OYPC, wants to identify policy gaps and the need to have a more coordinated university response in response to violence prevention.
Additionally, SafeCampus wants to hear from YOU! SafeCampus appreciates and enjoys the opportunities to hear from community members to understand potential scenarios and solutions, and what SafeCampus’ role would be in these scenarios. As Natalie says, “it’s fun for us to meet partners that we don’t get the chance to talk to often and to hear from everyone’s perspective.”
SafeCampus recognizes establishing healthy workplaces through actions such as formulating group agreements is a form of violence prevention that can be promoted university-wide. SafeCampus is always looking to intervene sooner when it comes to prevention work; therefore, it’s important for the university to expand the promotion of healthier work environments to prevent bullying and discrimination in the workplace. SafeCampus has resources for survivors of both violence and discrimination. In response to addressing workplace discrimination and violence, SafeCampus is committed to assessing who on their team can best help the survivor, and how they can best support them through their process and their options.
SafeCampus is a Resource to all
It can feel overwhelming to know when to call SafeCampus. However, Natalie and the SafeCampus team want to emphasize that anyone can call SafeCampus anonymously to consult about their current situation or hypothetical situations. SafeCampus is here to help in any way possible and to overcome barriers to our community getting the services they need.
The Office of the Title IX Coordinator has produced a training video that simulates a SafeCampus call. This resource will soon be available to our community so folks can get a sense of what a real call would look like — so stay tuned for updates!
A BIG THANK YOU to Natalie for taking the time out of her busy and important work to share her stories with all of us as a part of Youth at UW!
SafeCampus Number: 206-685-7233, Available 24 hours / 7 days a week
Email (safecampus@uw.edu) monitored weekdays 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.