As explained by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, “a safety plan is a personalized, practical plan that includes ways to remain safe while in a relationship, planning to leave, or after you leave. Safety planning involves how to cope with emotions, tell friends and family about the abuse, take legal action, and more.”
With this safety planning guide, you can be equipped with a strategy either for yourself or for someone else to feel safe from their abuser/the person who harms them. This guide is not exhaustive, and you can find out more at the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Emotional safety planning:
- Find and/or connect with people you trust who can help you process and support you when needed. This can be a friend or family member, or a trained professional like a therapist.
- This will be a difficult and unnerving time. Remind yourself of your resilience, strength, and value.
- Create realistic, actionable goals: Work on your own timeline and remember that you are not obligated to do anything uncomfortable. A realistic, actionable goal can look like calling a local resource center.
Safety planning while staying with the person who harms:
- Create a safety bag to be kept with a trusted person, which has either originals or copies of the following documents: birth certificate, driver’s license/state ID/ passport, children’s birth certificates and passports (if applicable), immigration documents, medical records and health insurance cards, legal documents/order of protection/restraining order, cash, few items of clothing, keepsakes, a new phone or prepaid phone with important contacts saved, and a spare set of keys.
- Inform trusted friends, family, and/or colleagues of what is going on and develop coded language to signal for help.
- Identify safe areas in the home that are possible to retreat to when your partner is getting violent.
Preparing to leave the person who harms (*Note that leaving an abusive partner may result in escalated harm):
- Inform someone you trust about what is happening and that you are leaving so that they can support and provide protection as deemed necessary.
- Reach out to a local domestic violence (DV) shelter or agency to continue safety planning and to consider safe options of relocation.
- Keep records of the violence and abuse such as photos of injuries, screenshots of messages, recordings of calls, etc.
When leaving the person who harms:
- Reach out to the people you trust and who are aware of your situation to create a plan of escape.
- You may also request a friend and/or community member to escort you out.
- Remember to grab your safety bag (whether it is in your home or with a trusted person).
After leaving the person who harms:
- Change your phone number, and if you are residing somewhere else, OR are still residing in your own home separate from your partner, change the locks.
- Reschedule any appointments that the person who harms may be aware of. This may also mean disconnecting from any shared online calendars.
- Inform your job (and kids’ school if necessary) about what is happening and request changing work hours. Change your route to work and any other familiar places the person who harms may be aware of.
To create your own safety plan, you can access The Hotline’s interactive guide. You can do this alone or with someone you trust. This safety plan can be either kept with you or shared with those you trust.
Another tool that might be helpful for when you’re in crisis is pod mapping. Developed by Mia Mingus and the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC) to specifically address violence – who would you call if you were in a situation of receiving violence or abuse or wanting to be held accountable for violence or abuse you might have done. Since then its use has been expanded to map and understand support systems across multiple vulnerable situations.
