When Self-Care Isn’t Enough: Addressing the Roots of Burnout in Victim Advocacy to Create Change
On a good day, victim advocates are tired. On the worst days, they’re barely recognizable to themselves, hollowed out by the weight of work that never stops mattering. Burnout in victim advocacy isn’t a weakness. It’s a signal. And it demands more than a bubble bath.
This workshop moves beyond surface-level self-care to examine the systemic roots of burnout: the underfunding, the impossible caseloads, the cultures of silence that ask advocates to absorb trauma without support. We’ll name what’s actually happening, and we’ll build tools to do something about it.
Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how organizational dynamics fuel exhaustion, and with concrete strategies for advocating not just for survivors — but for themselves and the people they work alongside.
The session will also explore the intersection of mental health and organizational dynamics, offering practical tools to promote resilience and build more supportive environments in advocacy work.
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Speaker
Robyn C. Sordelett is the Survivor Center Director at the Prosecutors Alliance and a nationally recognized speaker on sustainable advocacy and survivor-centered best practices. A clinical social worker by training and a 2026 Office of the Virginia Attorney General Unsung Hero Award winner, she has built her career across the criminal justice system, community-based organizations, and policy spaces, always centering trauma, resilience, and systemic change. At the Prosecutors Alliance, she leads efforts to center survivors in conversations about justice and reform while supporting victim advocates’ psychological and emotional well-being, exploring vicarious trauma, burnout, and the conditions that foster resilience and shared power. A frequent national presenter, Robyn is regularly consulted on organizational wellness and trauma-responsive advocacy, with a core focus on reconnecting justice workers with the purpose that brought them to the field. She is also deeply interested in work that advances collaborative, trauma-responsive approaches to domestic and sexual violence and innovative responses to gender-based violence beyond traditional systems. Robyn was appointed by Governor Abigail Spanberger to the Criminal Justice Services Board in 2026, serves on the National Organization for Victim Advocacy’s Public Policy Committee, and stays up far too late reading mystery novels. Robyn holds a B.A. in English and Sociology from the University of Richmond and an M.S.W. from the University of Southern California.