What is technical assistance (TA) and how can anti-violence organizations benefit from it?

By Patty Branco, Director of Technical Assistance, National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV)

My job title is a conversation starter. Unlike saying you are a dentist, firefighter, or car mechanic, saying that you are Director of Technical Assistance (or Technical Assistance Specialist, as it was the case for many years) is not self-explanatory. It invites curiosity and requires clarification. Even within the anti-violence field, where technical assistance (also known as TA) is widely provided, not everyone is familiar with the term or understands the concept in the same way. In this piece, my goal is to provide more clarity about what TA is and how organizations in our field can greatly benefit from it.

My main task as a TA provider is to “help the helpers.” In the anti-violence field, this means ensuring that advocates, health and mental health care providers, faith leaders, housing organizations, law enforcement agencies, and other professionals and organizations that survivors of abuse rely on for help have the skills and knowledge needed to respond effectively. To support this work, a network of national resource centers and institutes, as well as state, territorial, and tribal coalitions, actively help the helpers by offering timely and evidence-based TA. While some of these TA providers focus on specific populations, others take a more general approach, widening the pool of support for the different types of helpers that exist.

Defining TA

For several decades, technical assistance (TA) has been widely practiced around the world as a strategy for addressing large-scale, longstanding, and emerging social issues. Beyond the anti-violence field, TA has been used in diverse disciplines, including child welfare, youth development, early childhood intervention, education, health care, developmental disabilities, and sexual and reproductive health.

Broadly speaking, TA “refers to professional development, coaching and mentoring, consultation, and other supports provided to programs and organizations” to affect change or support the adoption of evidence-based or innovative practices. However, there is no commonly accepted definition in the published literature. In fact, studies rarely include an explicit definition of TA, and among those that do, definitions vary widely. Experts have proposed several working definitions, including the following: TA is an individualized and hands-on approach to capacity building in organizations and communities.

Drawing from multiple definitions, some researchers have identified the following core features of TA:

• The aim is to increase capacity
• Services target systems-level change (organization or community)
• Supports are targeted and tailored
• Supports are provided by a subject matter expert or specialist

All of the above elements are essential to the understanding and practice of technical assistance at the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV). Because TA is a core part of NRCDV’s work, we define it as the sharing of information, resources, referrals, and/or materials on topics related to domestic violence in response to requests from anyone who wishes to expand their knowledge or build their capacity to address these issues.

NRCDV provides a wide range of free, comprehensive, and individualized TA to a broad range of recipients, including but not limited to:

• Advocates seeking best practices information to enhance their services to trauma survivors
• Faith leaders looking to raise awareness about relationship abuse in their congregation
• Social workers seeking age-appropriate books to use with children who have been exposed to domestic violence
• Media professionals seeking statistics and recommended sources to quote in their stories
• Policymakers seeking input on policies and legislation to protect survivors and their children  
• Students wanting to learn more about domestic violence and ask questions for school projects
• Family and friends who want to help a loved one or get involved in helping end domestic violence in their communities
• Employers who wish to strengthen their workplace’s response to domestic violence
• Professionals seeking awareness materials to display in their agencies or to handout at community events
• Anyone seeking information related to domestic violence and intersecting issues

As suggested by these examples, TA can be delivered effectively in many forms, including written products such as TA guidance documents, fact sheets, and reports, as well as phone calls, emails, webinars, on-site visits, and peer-to-peer learning meetings. Often, TA providers use multiple formats to match the TA approach to the problem at hand and the nature of the recipient’s request. Lessons learned from evaluations of TA programs suggest that it is important to consider project type, topic, and participants’ preferences when determining which TA formats to offer.

How TA Supports Advocates and Advances Anti-Violence Work

After more than 20 years of providing TA at the national level, I believe technical assistance is a key strategy for supporting our field’s efforts to end violence and promote safe, thriving families and communities.

It is a versatile capacity-building strategy and can meet a wide range of recipients’ needs. Technical assistance can be delivered to individuals, organizations, or systems to “assess gaps, barriers, and/or needs and identify solutions; develop a strategic plan for long-term change; or create innovative approaches to emerging, complex issues.” TA topics and content can address a wide range of longstanding or emerging issues, driven by survivors’ needs, specific problems within an organization, changing political contexts, funders’ priorities, and more.

It can illuminate a path through the clutter. Information has never been more abundant or easily accessible. Despite this—or perhaps because of it—advocates and allied professionals can benefit from consulting with TA providers as they encounter information. Sometimes, TA recipients are uncertain about the origin of a particular statistic, or the data they find on their own searches may appear unclear, incomplete, or contradictory. TA providers can offer clarity and informed judgment, illuminating a path through the clutter.

Frontline advocates, who are engaged in life-saving work daily, may also lack the time or resources to read and process lengthy, complex reports. TA providers often untangle this complexity by developing concise research briefs and fact sheets, making information both accessible and digestible. As one TA recipient reflected: “Every time I have a need that requires a big answer with several resources, I reach out to the TA team at the NRCDV. I always receive a thorough answer with high-quality resources.”

It can enhance service effectiveness and reach. As a capacity-building strategy, TA is often delivered to organizations serving individuals and groups with limited resources. As a TA recipient explained: “NRCDV has a very good handle on what’s available and an excellent resource on VAWnet. The resources provided helped start conversations and frame a lot of our follow up work with an international pool of advocates that work with very little resources in their communities.” TA delivery to programs supporting communities facing significant challenges has the potential to enhance service effectiveness and reach, improving outcomes for all survivors.

It promotes relationship and partnership building in the field. Technical assistance is very much about building meaningful relationships and partnerships. First, as a TA provider, I need to know the landscape of available resources and expertise across the field so that I can offer appropriate referrals as needed. This could look like connecting a survivor with their local shelter for help or referring an organization seeking training on a specific topic to a subject matter expert, for example. Additionally, research suggests that respectful, strengths-based relationships between the provider and recipient are important in the technical assistance context. Ideally, the recipient reaches out to the provider with faith and confidence in the provider’s ability to help, while the provider approaches the TA engagement with humility and a collaborative mindset. Ultimately, both the recipient and the provider are enriched by the experience.

Last but not least, TA providers are conveners and ought to be building bridges everywhere. TA providers can create learning spaces where survivors, advocates, and allied professionals gather together, identify gaps where critical collaborations are needed (e.g., faith leaders and secular advocates, child welfare agencies and advocacy programs), and more. Collaborations such as these increase survivors' access to comprehensive and responsive services.

It creates a knowledge cascade. In the context of TA, people amplify information when they share it with others. Knowledge and resources obtained through TA are frequently shared by recipients within their agencies, communities, and the survivors they serve. After receiving TA, one advocate stated that she was “able to respond better to questions other clients have about DV.” She also added, “I try to encourage them to seek you guys out as well for your information and resources.” In addition, advocates and practitioners are often trained by TA providers to train others (also known as Train-the-Trainer activities), creating a multiplying effect in learning. As experts in the field have beautifully put it: “Instead of being ‘empty vessels’ to be filled, TA recipients are active agents who are always learning and growing and could themselves serve as a resource to others in the future.”

Conclusion

Technical assistance holds many promises. It can serve as a versatile strategy to meet a wide range of capacity-building needs; help advocates make sense of a complicated information landscape; support organizations and communities in enhancing service effectiveness and reach; promote relationship and partnership building in the field; and create a knowledge cascade.

To accomplish these goals, TA should be, to the extent possible, evidence-based, accessible, relevant, and timely from the participants’ perspective. Experts suggest that “funders will likely continue to use TA to expand organizations’ capacity, identify solutions to problems, and develop strategies for long-term change.” Other important conditions must also be in place for TA to live up to its full potential. Insights and lessons from TA provision in international contexts remind us that “people skill up and change behaviors only when empowered, when having the opportunity to apply the skills in their day-to-day jobs, and when their context is conducive to changes in behaviors and practices.”

Because effective TA requires humility from providers as much as it requires them to be knowledgeable, I approach this process as both a facilitator and a learner. As I write about technical assistance, Paulo Freire’s groundbreaking teachings on adult learning have come to mind from time to time. While a meaningful discussion of his theories is beyond the scope of this piece, I would be remiss not to mention that Freirean pedagogy has much to teach us as we engage in TA as providers and recipients—both parties learning together in relationship and love-in-action, using dialogue to transform reality, promote critical consciousness, and rehumanize society.

As always, NRCDV invites your technical assistance inquiries at nrcdvTA@nrcdv.org.