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Safety Planning
 
Information compiled uses resource material from Catholic Charities Schoharie County Domestic Violence Program, and Author Lundy Bancroft’s book “Why Does He Do That?”
 
Safety:
Plan considerations:

• An Advocate can support you and connect you to resources.
• If possible plan out your steps before you leave.
• Do you need to relocate to a safe environment or make your address confidential from your abuser?

 
Do you have:

• Safe (confidential) family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, or acquaintances that you can trust and reach out to for safety?
• Child care/support for your children?
• Access to phone and/or computers?
• Important papers; birth certificate, social security cards, health care cards, driver’s license or photo ID, deed/mortgage,/rental statements, debit cards?
• Caretakers for your family members or pets in your care?
• Access to a vehicle?

 
Do you need:

• Safe shelter/housing?
• An order of protection for you or your children, or pets, family and friends?
• To file for child support and custody?
• Money, a job, public assistance, emergency assistance?

 
Seek Assistance and be Strategic: There are different things to consider depending on your situation.  You may need to plan for safety:

• While you are living with an abusive partner/while living with abuse.
• After you leave the abusive partner.

 
An Advocate Can Help You:

• Plan various routes out of and from your house and make a plan where you will go, where your children, and where your pets will go after you get out.  If you can, follow your plan.
• Plan transportation: your car, a friend or family, bus, taxi, train.
• Plan for housing: a safe dwelling or shelter, family or friends, hotel.
• Hide a Grab and Go Bag which holds a spare set of keys, important documents such as social security card, check book, and/or bank cards, cash, list of medications. The Grab and Go Bag is ready when you are.
• If you sense an abusive episode may start, or if it has started, go to a safer room where the abuser is not likely to have access to knives, guns, and other weapons.
• Set code words with trustworthy, confidential friends, relatives, and your children. If you have mutual friends with an abuser, consider whether they can be trusted. Code words can alert support persons to an emergency. Plan a response for when a code word is spoken.
• Open a secret bank account, a credit card in your name, a PO Box, or ask an Advocate how to set up an address with the Address Confidentiality Program.
  
• Place a working phone in a secret secure location in your home.
• Teach your children to dial 911. Teach them how to contact safe trusted family and friends in an emergency.
• Speak with your medical care provider to seek support and guidance.
• Call a Crisis Hotline or the local Police. Have these numbers readily available.

 
See also: Safety Planning with Children Coming soon.
 
If You Leave Your Home: (Remember, an Advocate can help you with this)

• Secure your new home; change locks, replace wooden doors with metal, install security system and/or cameras.
• Advise your children, family, friends, and professionals to keep your place of residency confidential.
• Inform your neighbors, friends, family, co-workers, professionals, and others you trust that you no longer live with your partner. Distribute photos of the abuser and vehicle.
• Vary your travel routes so that you don’t travel the same way to work, the gym, and school the same way at the same time every day. Purchase a dash-cam.
• If you decide to obtain an Order of Protection yourself and/or your children and pets keep a copy with you at all times. Keep an extra copy in your car and give a copy to your children’s school and to your workplace.  Advise the local police departments of the situation, the risks you fear, past threats of violence that you have endured.
• Inform you children’s school of the risks, and give them a photo of the abuser.  Be sure they have a copy of any custody and visitation orders.
• Purchase rope ladders to climb from upper floors if you had to.

 
Key Points to Remember:

• The abuser may ‘go to war’ to prove that you belong to him.
• Remain alert and use caution for protection.
• Invest in yourself and take time to heal.
• “Your life belongs to you and no one else but you.”

 
Additional Keypoints

• When you are ready to leave grab your Grab and Go Bag, and other important documents and medications.
• Follow your plan as best as you can, but remain flexible if things change or do not go according to plan.
• Remember that an Advocate can support you, and that there are many people that can assist you in finding the resources you need.

 
Sustainability Tools:
 
Domestic Violence and other victim assistance programs: Support is available to access resources for long term strategies for success.

• Advocates can connect you to specific resources that will be helpful to your particular case.
• Financial empowerment classes and budgeting assistance available. 
• Counseling.
• Support groups
• Referrals to community supports.

-Job search programs, employment education
-Housing support programs
-Programs for support with heat, utilities, furniture, emergency financial issues
-Food insecurity solutions
-Child Care
-Addiction Recovery support
 
 
Schoharie County Domestic Violence Crisis Hotline  518-234-2231

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