Escape

Our Vision

Jean Nidetch Care Center aims to end various forms of power-based violence by engaging the campus community in education, programming, and transformative action. Our long-term goals include establishing the Care Center as a national leader in providing access to holistic healing from trauma and engaging in individual, community, and systemic anti-violence advocacy through an anti-oppression lens.

We use the phrase “power-based violence” to draw attention to how violence is used to create and maintain control and power by one person over another.

Our Mission

Jean Nidetch Care Center serves UNLV, NSU, and CSN students, faculty, and staff who have been impacted by power-based violence, including sexual violence, relationship violence, family violence, and/or stalking. We operate from an anti-oppression framework to provide trauma-informed and healing-centered care, including:

Client Service and Case Management

  • Direct support meetings
  • Care Survivor Fund
  • Appointment accompaniment
  • Support team membership

Care Advocate Training Institute

  • Confidential care advocate training for UNLV students
  • Ongoing professional development and supervision of care advocates
  • Technical assistance, training, and support for national, state, and community partners
  • CATI: A volunteer and practicum opportunity

Institutional and Systemic Advocacy

  • Campus and statewide task force membership
  • Violence Prevention Response Team (VPRT)
  • Engaging in and informing research and policy

Campus Education and Student Engagement

  • Presentations and outreach events for NSHE classes and student organizations
  • Annual awareness month events
  • Customizable trainings for NSHE departments
  • UNLV Support Team membership

Healing Through Connections

  • Holistic healing workshops with on-campus and off-campus organizations are offered each semester
  • The Student’s Guide to Radical Healing Zine
  • Healing library

The Jean Nidetch Scholarship Fund

  • Up to five years of academic financial support for undergraduate and graduate students

Why Are Our Services Essential?

The Care Center’s services and programs are essential to creating a safer and more supportive campus environment.

Power-based violence, such as sexual violence, relationship violence, family violence, and/or stalking, involves actions meant to control, intimidate, and/or diminish another person’s autonomy. These behaviors include physical violence, emotional manipulation, coercion, and other harmful tactics.

Our work helps raise awareness, provide support, and promote prevention strategies that empower the campus community to recognize, respond to, and prevent violence.

Research consistently shows:

  • College-aged women have the highest risk for all forms of violence.
  • One in four women and one in seven men will be affected by domestic or dating violence in their lifetime
  • Consistent abuse occurs in as many as one in three gay and lesbian relationships
  • One in two transgender individuals will face sexual violence in their lifetime.
  • Our confidential services are designed to address the power-based violence that marginalized identities are disproportionately at risk of experiencing.

Herstory

The Care Center was dedicated to Jean Nidetch in 1994 after her generous donation to fund the center and to set up a scholarship endowment for students who have faced and overcome adversity in achieving their academic goals.