Possible Actions:

• Hold discussions within the literacy community and between the literacy and counselling providers about possible connections between literacy and therapy.
  
  
• Conduct assessments of the availability of appropriate counselling services in the community.
  
  
• Develop program capacity to do referrals and provide support to learners working with counselors.
  
  
• Explore collaborative relationships between literacy programs and providers of counselling to make stronger links between education and counselling processes.
  
  
• Assess program staff skill levels in relation to supporting learners with counselling needs and hire/train staff if necessary.

Vicarious Trauma

The eagerness with which literacy workers came to interview sessions, their tales learners who were struggling with memories or current experiences of trauma, suggested that workers' needs were not getting met elsewhere.

Some counselors suggested that the literacy worker, like the women who experienced the trauma, also has a challenge to regain a sense of control, meaning and connection for herself. There is a growing literature about counselors' experience of vicarious trauma. The impact might even be more severe for literacy workers than for counselors, because they are less in control of the process of hearing about the trauma. Literacy workers have little control over when they will hear stories and have fewer boundaries to control how much they will hear and what to expect. A literacy worker may read a horrifying story in a journal, or may hear one from a learner at the end of the day when she is hurrying home. One counselor spoke of “door knob” disclosures, that came when the woman had her hand on the door knob. Literacy workers agreed that description fit their experience and spoke of disclosures prefaced by the question “Have you got a minute?” They explained how hard it was to say they did not have a “minute,” and once the disclosure began, how hard it was to put an end to the telling, even if they did not have time or energy to listen.

Some literacy workers spoke of having clear boundaries and having learn a wide range of ways to look after themselves and leave the horrors behind. Others were surprised even by the idea that they might consider their own needs, set their own limits, or find ways to leave the exhaustion and horror of disclosures behind.

Possible Actions:

• Instigate discussion about issues of vicarious trauma amongst literacy workers.
  
  
• Provide training for paid and volunteer literacy workers in boundaries, self- care, and issues of the costs of supporting learners who have experienced violence.
  
  
• Allot time for debriefing and peer support meetings.
  
  
• Provide “supervision”, or support, for workers who are providing counselling, for workers supporting learners who have been referred to counselors, and for workers engaged with a learner/learners which trigger issues for the workers themselves.