WESTLOCK - Westlock RCMP Staff Sgt. Al Baird calls them the “unsung heroes” of the community.
And on May 12 Baird honoured past and present Westlock Community Victim Services Unit Association members by presenting current manager Leah Breckenridge a special print commemorating “25 years of partnership with the RCMP ensuring quality service to victims in the community.”
“They form an integral part of our detachment. Before Victim Services there were no advocates, so all the work that they do, contacting victims and getting victim-impact statements, doing referrals … all that used to be done by the members,” said Baird.
“Having the VSU has helped us tremendously, they’ve been phenomenal for us. When anything bad happens they’re typically right there with us. They’re the unsung heroes, nobody sees them, but they’re out there helping and doing a great job and ensuring people are looked after and not forgotten about.”
Added Breckenridge: “We have such a great relationship with them, we try to complement the RCMP.”
Broadly speaking, VSUs support victims of crime in partnership with the RCMP, municipal police services and community-based programs. Specifically, VSU advocates — who are all volunteers — assist police with things like next-of-kin notifications, or help victims navigate the court process and prepare things like victim impact statements.
“For policing we have to do our jobs and then kind of move on, so it’s nice to have a liaison or someone who can work with the victim so they don’t feel left out and can feel that they are a part of the system,” Baird continued.
“We work closely with them and they do a fabulous job. We appreciate the hard work and effort Leah and her team have done, as well as the people in the past who have taken part in it and started it. They laid the foundation for what’s here today.”
For Breckenridge, who’s been the Westlock program manager since October 2019, the key to its long-term success are the dedicated volunteer core of eight advocates, the volunteer board and the paid support staffer who is their court coordinator.
“And this can’t be understated that these are volunteers — not to discredit any volunteers for the work they do — but these are people who are willing to be woken up in the middle of the night and attend somebody’s worst nightmare. That really is the backbone of this unit. Without volunteers we don’t provide much of a service.
“In the time I’ve been here I’ve brought on one new volunteer, so I’ve inherited a really phenomenal group of people and I know how fortunate I am.”
In fact, Breckenridge said VSU has been around a little longer 25 years as she’s been able to find VSU board correspondence that has the unit’s inception dated 1992.
“To be 25 years, or 29 years, it’s so substantial. I can’t imagine how many lives Victim Services have touched over the course of nearly three decades,” said Breckenridge.
“We don’t like that our services are needed because that means people are going through bad things, but it is so important as so many people are truly victims. They have no concept how the court process works, they have no idea how to navigate resources in the community for themselves because it’s been thrust upon them. So having an agency and people who can direct and guide them through that is so important. So often we hear from those people that didn’t know that we even existed and after going through it, they’re so glad that we do.”
