"There is nothing more that we can do."

One year ago, I attended the NC Governor's Crime Commission conference at the Sea Trail Conference Center in Sunset Beach, NC. US Representative Poe from Texas was the keynote speaker on the opening day. He told many stories of his creative sentencing when he was a judge. The crux of his message was that more can always be done to help people.

He emphasized the need for creativity when working with offenders in order to support and help victims of crime.

Victims of domestic vioelnce are frquently told that nothing more can be done. Sometimes they are told that nothing can be done until the abuser commits another crime. Even if the next crime is not a murder, the inherent message to a victim is that they have to make the sacrifice of being hurt again in order for the abuser to be punished or held accountable.

As advocates and allies, we owe it to victims to ask what more can we do? And, what more can we do that does not involve the victim being hurt again?

To answer that question, we need creativity. When we believe that nothing more can be done, often it's because we are only looking at our sanctioned laundry list of services that may or may not match up to the needs of the people we serve.

When our services don't match up with victim's needs, that's our cue to get creative in our solutions and to brainstorm with survivors about what can be done. Then we have to be willing to act on these creative solutions, regardless of the standard list of services we have.

We can move towards saying, "There is more that can be done. Let's find the solution together."