ICP Resources
ICP staff have assembled a comprehensive list of additional external resources divided into our 16 best practice areas as well as an Overall Victim Assistance Resources category. These will help emergency management personnel, victim services professionals, and key community stakeholders locate specific material and guidance to integrate victim services into comprehensive emergency operations plans.
Are you a community seeking to augment or create your mass violence preparedness plan? These initial resources will be helpful:
Statewide Preparation & Planning Resources
While every MVI and community is unique, there is a core group of partners who are critical to be involved in, and committed to, the planning for MVI readiness and response. Many of the partners are represented by state and local agencies and/or statewide Associations as well as federal and national organizations. During the planning and preparation process, other groups can be added that may provide additional assistance as needed.
ICP Annex Planning Document
ICP Annex Planning Document
Tips for Healthcare Facilities: Assisting Families and Loved Ones After a Mass Casualty Incident
This document highlights promising practices and strategies for addressing concerns among the loved ones of the wounded, missing, or deceased, who may rush to healthcare facilities, reunification centers, or the incident site to seek information and reunification.
Alaska Victim Assistance Partnership
A toolkit for community leaders helping plan and organize the response to a Mass Violence Incident with a victim-centered focus.
Mass Violence vs. Mass Fatality Planning
Many communities believe they are ready to respond to a mass violence incident because they have an existing mass fatality plan. However, mass fatality plans often lack several key components needed for a successful response to a mass violence incident. This resource details the similarities and differences between mass fatality and mass violence plans and makes a case for the development of a robust mass violence plan.
Incident Command System
FEMA ICS Resource Center
This site contains links to the documents that make up FEMA’s National Incident Management System, including a summary document, task books and skillsets, training courses, glossary, job aids, reference documents and official ICS forms.
OVC Response Checklist
During the response phase, which occurs immediately after an incident, law enforcement officials, first responders, victim service providers, and others will manage, coordinate, and implement many of the protocols developed during the partnerships and planning phase. These protocols include Committee Meeting, Incident Command System, Communications, Family Assistance Center, Victim Identification, Victim Notification, Volunteer Management, and Donation Management. The primary agencies will be following the protocols simultaneously in a chaotic atmosphere, requiring them to coordinate their activities. The Response Checklist can be downloaded and tailored to fit the needs of your community.
Committee Identification & Engagement
Role of Victim Service Professionals in Preparing for Mass Violence Incidents
The Role of Victim Service Professionals in Preparing for Mass Violence Incidents tip sheet defines the crucial role of VSPs in the readiness phase of a mass violence incident.
Contact List
Building Relationships Between Law Enforcement and Victim Service Professionals
Victim advocates and law enforcement officers play a critical role in establishing and maintaining victim engagement and cooperation throughout the criminal justice process. Law enforcement officers are usually the first responders to a crime scene, but may not have the resources and specialized knowledge needed to serve victims in the aftermath of their victimization.
Source: National Center for Victims of Crime
OVC Contact List Template
This OVC template helps track key stakeholders and organize the resources they bring to the community.
Source: Office for Victims of Crime
Friends and Relatives Center (FRC) Plan
Overview of Three Centers
Overview of Three Centers: Friends & Relatives Center, Family Assistance Center, and Resiliency Center
Friends and Relatives Center Plan
Template for communities to use for planning the Friend and Relatives Center
Friends and Relatives Center Internal and External Partners
Matrix of potential internal and external partners to provide services offered by Friends and Relatives Centers in higher education settings.
ASPR TRACIE Hospital Family Assistance Tip Sheet
ASPR TRACIE has developed a series of tip sheets for hospitals and other healthcare facilities planning for no-notice incident response. Our traditional concepts and approaches have not kept pace with real-world incidents in the U.S. and other countries or the challenges the healthcare system faces in managing the resulting extraordinarily large number of casualties.
Victim Identification and Notification Protocol
Providing Sensitive Trauma Notifications
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Victim Services Division developed an online training course to help law enforcement officers, medical examiners, victim service professionals, and other professionals make sensitive trauma notifications.
Victim List Template
This OVC document allows a community to quickly start to build a data base of all victims in an incident.
Public Information and Crisis Communications Protocol
No resources available at this time.
Volunteer Management Protocol
Volunteer Management Checklist
This checklist emphasizes structured engagement, planning, clear role definitions, supervisor identification, and trauma-informed training to ensure volunteers effectively fill gaps in community response and support services.
Family Assistance Center (FAC) Plan
Overview of Three Centers
Overview of Three Centers: Friends & Relatives Center, Family Assistance Center, and Resiliency Center
Family Assistance Center Plan
A template for building a Family Assistance Center Plan for Higher Education institutions.
Family Assistance Center Planning Starter Guides
Guide to planning a Family Assistance Center for Higher Education institutions.
Family Assistance Center Internal and External Partners
Matrix of potential internal and external partners to provide services offered by Friends and Relatives Centers in higher education settings.
Joint Mass Fatality Family Assistance Center Operations
This guide was developed by the FBI Office for Victim Assistance and the NTSB Transportation Disaster Assistance Division for local and state agencies involved in the response to mass fatality events. It provides an overview of the components of the family assistance process and family assistance center operations as they relate to
transportation and criminal incidents.
Donation Management Protocol
National Compassion Fund
The National Compassion Fund (NCF) provides a single, trusted way for the public to donate directly to victims of a mass crime. It was developed by the National Center for Victims of Crime in partnership with victims and family members from mass casualty crimes. NCF serves donors by honoring their intent and crime victims by distributing donations directly to them, in a fair and transparent way. Donations are collected through a partnership with GoFundMe. If necessary, NCF and GoFundMe can collect donations for multiple mass tragedies at the same time. Donors can designate which events to donate to, and those funds will be kept separately.
Memorial and Special Events Management Plan
Community Remembering
Almost immediately after a mass violence incident there is a need for municipal, community and faith leaders to organize more formal events, such as a simple candlelight vigil, to invite the community to gather for spiritual comfort, reassurance that appropriate safety steps are being taken, that community support will be available, and to lift spirits and affirm the resilience of the community. Memorial events that are student and community initiated and led are often the most helpful to survivors.
Community Behavioral Health Response
Virtual Resiliency Center
NMVC’s Virtual Resiliency Center at massviolence.help provides resources to help individuals and communities recover from mass violence.
Transcend MV Mobile App
Transcend MV is a self-help app designed to aid recovery from the psychological and behavioral response that can occur following direct or indirect exposure to mass violence incidents. Although the mobile app was developed specifically for mass violence victims, people exposed to other types of stressful events are also likely to find the strategies and techniques in the app to be useful in their recovery.
Recommended Online Clinical Training
NMVC maintains a list of recommended trainings for empirically-based, trauma-focused treatments for psychotherapy providers.
SAMHSA Disaster Technical Assistance Center
SAMHSA DTAC assists states, territories, tribes, and local entities with all-hazards disaster behavioral health response planning that allows them to prepare for and respond to both natural and human-caused disasters. SAMHSA DTAC also supports collaboration among mental health and substance abuse authorities, federal agencies, and nongovernmental organizations and facilitates in the sharing of information and best practices with the disaster behavioral health field.
First Responder Support
Center for Firefighter Behavioral Health
The CFFBH team is internationally recognized as experts in the development and evaluation of self-help and provider training resources for firefighters and other first responders.
IACP Vicarious Trauma Initiative
This International Association of Chiefs of Police (IEACP) initiative, funded by the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), provides dedicated resources, training and technical assistance to 12 communities seeking to build interdisciplinary, cross-agency collaborations to assess and address the impact of vicarious trauma on their respective staff.
OVC Vicarious Trauma Toolkit
The Vicarious Trauma Toolkit (VTT) was developed by Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) on the premise that exposure to the traumatic experiences of other people—known as vicarious trauma—is an inevitable occupational challenge for the fields of victim services, emergency medical services, fire services, law enforcement, and other allied professionals; however, organizations can mitigate the potentially negative effects of trauma exposure by becoming vicarious trauma-informed.
Planning & Preparedness Grants and Emergency Funding Assistance
Federal Emergency Funding Options
The Antiterrorism and Emergency Assistance Program (AEAP) supports crisis, response, consequence management, criminal justice support, crime victim compensation, and training and technical assistance in the aftermath of an incident.
Community Resilience Planning
Overview of Three Centers
Overview of Three Centers: Friends & Relatives Center, Family Assistance Center, and Resiliency Center
Role of VSPs in Building Resilience
The National Mass Violence Center created a tip sheet defining the crucial role of Victim Service Professionals in the resilience phase of a mass violence incident.
Criminal Justice System – Victim Support
Court Planning Guide
The Planning and Implementation Guide for Comprehensive, Coordinated Victim Assistance for Mass Violence Incident Trials is designed to help prosecutors, victim services and mental/ behavioral health providers, and allied professionals plan for high-profile trials with a focus on victims’ and survivors’ needs, and effective and coordinated strategies to meet them. Created by NMVC and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina, with support from the Office for Victims of Crime.
Training and Exercise
NOVA NACP Pre-Approved Training Programs
This link includes a list of current National Advocate Credentialing Program Pre-Approved Training Programs by state as well as instructions for obtaining pre-approval for your victim assistance introductory advocacy training.
FEMA Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program
Exercises are a key component of national preparedness — they provide the whole community with the opportunity to shape planning, assess and validate capabilities, and address areas for improvement. HSEEP provides a set of guiding principles for exercise and evaluation programs, as well as a common approach to exercise program management, design and development, conduct, evaluation, and improvement planning.
Overall Victim Assistance Resources
OVC Victim of Mass Violence & Terrorism Toolkit
OVC's Helping Victims of Mass Violence & Terrorism: Planning, Response, Recovery, and Resources Toolkit was created for communities to prepare for and respond to victims of mass violence and terrorism in the most timely, effective, and compassionate manner possible. Through developing a comprehensive victim assistance plan, the community can respond to mass violence, terrorism, natural disasters, human-caused disasters, emergency crises, and high-profile criminal incidents promptly and more effectively.