VOCA Funding Cut Information

Last July the funding available to Illinois rape crisis centers through the Victims of Crime Act Fund (VOCA) was cut by 49%. VOCA uses non-taxpayer money from the Crime Victims Fund (CVF) for programs that serve victims of crime. Nationally, these funds support services for over 6 million victims of all types of crimes annually through 6,462 direct service organizations, including Resilience.

In the current FY24 appropriations bills, the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) is funded at $1.353 billion, which will constitute a roughly $630 million cut to VOCA grants compared to FY 23.

This is a hard-won $153 million over the initial funding levels in the proposed President’s Budget and earlier versions of the House and Senate budgets ($1.2 billion). Even though the funding level is woefully short of our $1.9 billion level-funding request, it does reflect your stalwart advocacy.

How will these cuts impact Resilience?

Resilience only received $510,000 in VOCA funding for FY24 compared to $1,035,000 which we received the previous year.  We anticipate FY25 VOCA funding to remain at the same level. Leaving us with a $571,737 funding deficit.

Since FY23, Resilience has eliminated 2 full time advocates and 2 full time trauma therapist positions, we have closed our satellite office in Ravenswood and suspended 24-hour services in the emergency room of 2 partner hospitals.

This year our advocacy, trauma therapy and prevention education services were all wait-listed for months at a time.

How will this impact survivors?

Since these cuts went into effect last summer, direct services to survivors like 24-hour medical advocacy, legal advocacy, crisis intervention, and ongoing counseling or trauma therapy have been significantly impacted.

Resilience has had to freeze multiple positions, temporarily halt some survivor resources, close one of our office spaces, and create longer waitlists due to fewer advocates and therapists available to provide support, information and options in the aftermath of sexual violence. These equals hundreds of survivors this year who will not get the support and resources they desperately need.