What is VOCA and what’s valuable about VOCA Reporting?
VOCA stands for Victims of Crime Act and is a federal pot of money to support state and local programs that assist victims of crime. It’s often used for programs serving survivors of domestic violence, but can be accessed for a variety of programs serving survivors of crime (eg. Sexual Assault, Burglary, Arson, Elder abuse, Hate crimes, Human trafficking, and more). Many organizations rely on VOCA funds for their programs and for those working in these spaces without VOCA funds, it could unlock that new opportunity for funding.
VOCA Reporting is a requirement for VOCA funds. The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) is the federal agency that manages VOCA funds. They require quarterly performance reports that align with the federal fiscal year: October 1 - September 30. Grantees are required to enter these into the Performance Measurement Tool (PMT), which is a federally managed database.
Who can use it?
The VOCA Views will be accessible to all Casebook users, however, if your Casebook Platform is not set up with the VOCA fields the datasets will be empty. If you are interested in learning more about VOCA Reporting, reach out to your Customer Success Manager!
How do we set it up?
Please check out our Knowledge Base article, here.
VOCA Reporting specific definitions:
Victim: A Victim is a person who has suffered physical, sexual, financial, or emotional harm as the result of a crime. They can be a primary or secondary (significant other) victim of the crime.
NEW: A Victim is considered NEW only one time during the entire fiscal year. In the first reporting period that the Victim received VOCA services from the agency, they are reported as NEW. For the first reporting period, all service recipients are considered NEW.
CONTINUING: If a victim receives VOCA services from the agency in a subsequent quarter, they will be counted as CONTINUING. Even if a Victim returns with a different Victimization Type in the same fiscal year, they are counted as Continuing.