Disability Services
Disability Services ASAP (A Safety Awareness Program) provides training and education to help increase awareness about and prevent sexual and domestic violence and abuse. Through custom designed presentations and trainings for disability service providers, domestic and sexual violence staff and criminal justice personnel, the program offers technical assistance and consultation to individuals and organizations seeking guidance to reduce the risks of abuse against individuals with disabilities or to enhance accessibility to persons with disabilities.
The Disability Services Program offers information including:
- Building relationships between persons with disabilities, disability service or advocacy programs, crisis programs, or the criminal justice system
- Conducting targeted outreach to people with disabilities
- Developing or modifying services to maximize accessibility
- Disability awareness and sensitivity
- Healthy relationships and sexuality
Providing personal safety education to people with disabilities - Risk factors and strategies to reduce risks to abuse
- Safety planning with people with disabilities
- Sensitively and respectfully responding to abuse disclosures
- Sexual abuse or assault, domestic violence and abuse by personal care providers
- Dynamics of power and control in abusive relationships involving people with disabilities
- Developing accessible and relevant services
Growing research shows a strong relationship between traumatic childhood events, such as domestic violence, and adult symptoms of mental illness.
SafePlace is committed to ensuring that our services are accessible and welcoming to people with disabilities.
Abuse Education and Safety Planning Program for Women with Disabilities
SafePlace is partnering on a research project with the University of Montana Rural Institute on Disabilities and several other organizations to develop and evaluate an abuse education program for women living with any type of disability. Research findings indicate that women with disabilities are at increased risk for interpersonal abuse and violence—compared to women without disabilities.
This innovative, multi-session program, “ASAP (A Safety Awareness Program) for Women,” is based on the SafePlace “Stop the Violence, Break the Silence” curriculum.
The ASAP program will be implemented with approximately 200 women from 10 Independent Living Centers across the United States—women who often lack access to community-based safety planning and abuse prevention programs.Results of this research project will help domestic violence programs and disability-services providers offer future prevention programs for women with disabilities. *
The study is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation and Research. For more information, please contact Rosemary Hughes, the principal investigator.
*Despite high rates of violence against people with disabilities, in a 2003 national survey conducted by SafePlace, only 9% of sexual assault and domestic violence centers reported having a line item in their annual budget for accessibility and accommodations (Schwartz, Abramson & Kamper, 2004).