DAVENPORT, Iowa - - Victims of violent crimes can be affected long after the crime scene is cleaned up and police are gone.
"When we're done and I'm leaving, there's always that empty feeling that I'm gonna continue going on and doing my job but there's rebuilding that needs to be done by these victims and their families," said Lt. Jason Smith, Davenport Police Department.
Family Resources' new program, 'Survivors of Homicide and Other Violent Crimes' provides short and long term care that includes crisis response, advocacy and support groups.
"We've worked with a lot of homicide victims, some of them are something where there's been a loss some time ago and the case is just coming up, some of them we've been in the immediate aftermath of what's happened," said Emily Gordon, Survivor Services Supervisor.
In the first year of the program around 200 people have been served in the six counties they serve in Iowa and that's expected to grow as the program expands to Illinois.
As they expand, members of Family Resources work closely with police to make sure the program is able to serve victims who need it.
"We try to form a partnership where they know they can hand out our information or they can hand off a survivor's information to us," said Gordon.
It also gives police a resource to turn to, "that's the impact, that the officers have somewhere to turn, the officers have something to tell these victims that, there are resources out there available to them," said Smith.
Family Resources will be hiring more staff to serve victims as the program expands to Rock Island County.
