“These Services Are Keeping Me Alive.”

What Survivors Tell Us About the Impact of Advocacy in Virginia.

What Advocates Actually Do

It is trite to summarize advocacy work as “support services.” That phrase does not come close to capturing what happens when a survivor comes under the care of a sexual and domestic violence advocate.

Virginia’s advocates sit beside survivors in emergency rooms at 3 a.m. They accompany survivors to courtrooms where they face the person who harmed them. They help families navigate systems so complicated that they would be overwhelming even without a crisis: legal systems, housing systems, immigration systems, and healthcare systems. They help survivors find a safe place to sleep, create a safety plan, and take the next steps toward rebuilding their lives.

In 2025, Virginia’s 70+ Sexual and Domestic Violence Agencies delivered 309,922 hours of this work to 27,898 adults and children, averaging 11 hours per person, with survivors of sexual violence receiving an average of 13 hours and children receiving 9 to 10 hours. This data reflect the intensity and individualization of the work advocates do for those they serve.

What Survivors Say Advocates Helped Them With

Advocates effectively and compassionately steward survivors through myriad challenges in their efforts to escape violence. Among survivors who received services in 2025, they reported advocates helped them address:

Area of Help	% of Survivors Reporting Help
Addressing emotional needs and navigating trauma	97%
Impact of violence on relationships with family and friends	96%
Accessing healthcare services	95%
Transportation	94%
Legal system and legal issues	93%
Meeting basic financial needs	92%
Finding safe and affordable housing	88%
Navigating immigration concerns	82%

These are not abstract support categories. They represent the concrete, practical dimensions of a survivor’s path to safety, and they reflect just how many different systems a survivor may need to navigate simultaneously when trying to leave a dangerous situation.

What Survivors Say Changed

The report also captures what changed for survivors because they worked with an advocate:

• 97% report feeling more hopeful about their life
• 96% report knowing how to plan for their safety
• 95% report knowing where to find vital resources in the community
• 95% report knowing how to take their next steps
• 91% report that their children have more positive and healthy interactions with others
• 97% would either “strongly recommend” (84%) or “recommend” (13%) their local agency to a friend

These numbers are not the result of a single service encounter. They are the result of a relationship—an advocate who stayed beside a survivor through a process that is often frightening, confusing, and exhausting, and who made sure that the survivor came out the other side with more safety, more knowledge, and more hope than they had going in.

In Their Own Words

The report includes survivor responses to the question: “What would you have done if these services did not exist?”

Their answers say what statistics alone cannot:

• “I would have been homeless, dead, or in the hospital.”
• “I would have stayed.”
• “I would have had my children and I on [friends’] couches and floors and in my car for sleeping. Thank you for all you do for families like us.”
• “I wouldn’t have considered reporting or taking any legal action for my safety… the information and support I’ve received made it feel manageable to file a police report and to file for a protective order.”
• “I honestly don’t think I would still be living due to the stress and anxiety from this.”
• “I’d keep going back [to my abuser] and not know the difference between love and control… these services are keeping me alive.”
• “I would have crumbled when I got in front of the judge and probably would have been homeless in a vehicle with my kids.”

Why These Outcomes Make the Funding Crisis So Stark

Survivor advocacy is often discussed in terms of individual impact, and the individual impact is profound. But these services also produce public safety outcomes that benefit entire communities.

Survivors who receive advocacy services are more likely to access the legal protections available to them, connect with housing and financial resources that reduce their long-term instability, and make informed decisions about their safety. The 93% of survivors who got help navigating the legal system represent thousands of people who were better positioned to use civil and criminal justice tools to protect themselves and their children.

That makes the funding picture we document in the next post all the harder to accept. When the system that delivers these outcomes loses 54% of its federal funding over five years, and when 664 survivors were turned away from shelter in 2025 alone, these are not abstract policy failures. They are outcomes that did not happen, safety plans that were not made, legal processes that were not navigated, and families that did not find a safe place to sleep.

The data on what advocacy accomplishes when survivors can access it make the case for investment more clearly than any argument can.

Read the Full Report

• 📄 Download the full Survivor Advocacy in Virginia 2025 report (PDF)
• 📄 Read the official press release (PDF)

This is the second post in our series on the Survivor Advocacy in Virginia 2025 report. Read Post 1: the full report overview, Post 3: the funding crisis, Post 4: what we know about the perpetration of violence, Post 5: firearms and intimate partner violence, and Post 6: prevention.

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You Deserve Safety and Support

Virginia Statewide Sexual and Domestic Violence Hotline Call: 800.838.8238 | Text: 804.793.9999 | Chat: www.vadata.org/chat Free. Confidential. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. 365 days a year.

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