The ORCC Board of Directors thanks the Ottawa community for its continued patience and understanding as we focus on prioritizing support for survivors during the temporary closure of our organization, commencing December 3, 2020.
At this time, we are able to report:
- Our crisis line will continue to be available until 11:59pm on December 2, 2020. We are currently finalizing a partnership that will ensure the resumption of 24-hour crisis line services in the very near future by a team of trained volunteers that are well-equipped to support survivors of sexual violence. While we had hoped for a seamless transition, unfortunately there will be a brief temporary period of service interruption until we are able to fully operationalize and announce this new partnership. For this reason, as of 12am on December 3, 2020, callers will be informed of alternate crisis line providers that can assist them during the interim period. Here is a list of support services.
- All service users in our counselling program have received one-on-one support to help them identify and connect with other service providers, if they so desire. As of December 2, 2020, we do not have anyone on our waitlist for counselling services. We thank the ORCC staff team for their steadfast commitment to service users during this transition. We are currently finalizing a partnership with a provider of trauma-informed services that is able to provide safe and secure counselling sessions both online and in-person during our temporary closure. These sessions will be free of charge. We anticipate that we will be able to announce the details of this partnership and resume intake very soon. In the interim, there will be a brief period of service interruption for counselling services. Therefore, we have provided information about other organizations that are currently able to provide counselling services.
Alongside this work to ensure that survivors continue to receive the support they need during our temporary closure, we have:
- engaged IT experts to further assess and advise on the components of our IT infrastructure that require significant updates before we are able to commence safe and secure virtual delivery of counselling services. While the full scale and cost of this project has yet to be determined, we currently estimate that it will require an approximate investment of $100,000. We are investigating if there are more cost-effective solutions, but ultimately, our path forward will be determined by the technical requirements necessary to ensure that we never compromise the safety, security and privacy of survivors in the course of online service delivery.
- extensively liaised with and reported to our main funders, to keep them apprised of our current activities and the ORCC’s needs as we work to ensure the sustainability of our services both immediately and in the long-term.
We are committed to providing further updates in the coming days and weeks about the support we are putting in place for survivors during the ORCC’s temporary closure. We are grateful to every person and organization that has reached out to offer a helping hand in this regard. At every step of the process, the safety, security and needs of the diverse survivors in our community is the North Star that guides our collective efforts.
Respectfully,
The ORCC Board of Directors