SUMMARY

This dissertation examines how professionals in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) might organize person-centered and integrated support to enhance crime victims’ engagement with support services. Despite continuous efforts to improve crime victims’ access to support, many victims still do not receive adequate help to cope with their complex needs. Grounded in narrative victimology and inter-organizational service integration theory, this study examines how nonprofit professionals can organize support services to enhance victims’ help-seeking experiences. The study answers the following research question: How might nonprofit professionals organize person-centered and integrated support services to enhance victims’ support engagement and outcomes, and what factors might influence the effectiveness of these services? To address this question, the study employs a mixed-methods approach by combining statistical data from the Danish Victim Survey 2015-2019 (N=58,044) with narrative interviews with victims (N=8) and semi-structured interviews with professionals (N=33). Using a critical realist approach, the research phenomenon of organizing person-centered, integrated support services is conceptualized as complex, context-dependent, and shaped by societal structures, organizational practices, and each victim’s specific needs.

The analytical findings are presented in four chapters, two of which capture the perspectives of victims and two of which capture the perspectives of nonprofit professionals. The first analysis focuses on victims’ barriers to police reporting crime. Statistical findings indicate that victims of violent, property, and sexual crimes face unique challenges that impact their willingness to report victimization to the police. This highlights the importance of a person-centered approach that acknowledges and addresses these diverse barriers. The second analysis examines four in-depth narratives that illustrate how victims progress through the phases of help-seeking. These stories reveal that victims often require time to understand and articulate their needs before engaging productively with support services. Based on these findings, nine practical suggestions are provided for nonprofit professionals to enhance support engagement. The third analysis investigates nonprofit professionals’ approaches to integrating support services across organizational contexts. Using a service integration continuum, the study identifies six integration models: cooperation, coordination, collaboration, cross-referrals, intermediation, and co-management. This continuum clarifies how each model suits specific victim needs, including the inter-organizational conditions that substantiate its success. The fourth analysis identifies five additional contextual conditions that influence the organization of person-centered and integrated services within the victim support sector: user conditions, professional conditions, local conditions, external support provider conditions, and mandatory conditions.

In conclusion, this dissertation makes four key contributions to victimology and service integration research:

a) Some victims face structural barriers to seeking support and reporting crime to the police, shaping their help-seeking processes. Professionals can mitigate these barriers in support encounters by offering person-centered support. 

b) Person-centered support should ideally be organized according to the victim’s personal help-seeking process, victimhood, support needs, and understanding of the events. 

c) Integration models are differentiated and hold different opportunities and inter-organizational conditions for responding to victims’ support needs. 

d) When organizing person-centered and integrated services, nonprofit professionals navigate a cross-field of conditions, and attention to these conditions and the triggering mechanisms in the program theory is key to explaining the services’ operational dynamics. 

The dissertation’s final output is a program theory synthesizing these theoretical and empirical findings into a structured design framework for organizing person-centered and integrated services in the victim support sector. This program theory serves as a roadmap for how nonprofit professionals might organize narrative-informed and integrated support for crime victims when multiple organizations are involved in delivering support.  

BEDØMMELSESUDVALG

Lektor Nina Meier, Aalborg Universitet, Danmark (chair)

Professor Björn Johansson, Örebro Universitet, Sverige

Professor Antony Pemberton, Leuven University, Belgien

VEJLEDER

Professor Julie Borup Jensen, Aalborg Universitet

ORDSTYRER

Lektor Søren Frimann, Aalborg Universitet