Key Takeaways
- • A safety plan is a personalized set of actions to protect survivors and their children (if applicable) before, during, and after leaving.
- • Danger can rise when a survivor leaves, so safety planning should continue afterward.
- • Before leaving, identify safe places, line up support, pack a go-bag, document abuse, and keep the safety plan hidden.
- • After leaving, limit what the abuser can learn about you, plan for specific scenarios, and update the plan as circumstances change.
- • Recovery includes emotional healing, stable housing and income, and rebuilding independence and community.
- • Safety planning is voluntary, at the survivor’s own pace, and should reflect each person’s culture, unique needs, and barriers to services.
- • Trained advocates like those at CAWC can help, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.
What Is Safety Planning?
A domestic violence safety plan is a personalized set of practical actions that helps a survivor protect themselves and their children from harm. A safety plan doesn’t cover a single event. It can span over a survivor’s entire journey, from living with their abuser, to leaving, and finally to rebuilding a life after abuse. Because every situation is different, no two plans for survivor protection look alike.
The Goals of Safety Planning
Here’s how having a safety plan helps survivors:
- • Reduce risk at the most dangerous moments. In addition to ongoing abuse for survivors during the relationship, there is a chance an abuser will become more violent when a survivor tries to end the relationship, and the period after leaving is often the most dangerous.
- • Create options. Having several choices means a survivor isn’t left scrambling when circumstances change.
- • Keep the survivor in control. Developing a safety plan is voluntary and happens at the survivor’s own pace, ensuring the survivor’s decision-making is front and center.
- • Fit the person. Safety planning for survivors is meant to reduce the risk of revictimization and address their specific safety requirements. Plans should reflect each survivor’s needs, including things like disability-related elements and barriers to accessing services. In the US, immigrants and marginalized women are disproportionately impacted by domestic violence, so it’s vital that supporters and services be culturally competent.
How To Make a Safety Plan As You Prepare To Leave an Abuser
Here’s how to leave an abusive relationship as safely as possible:
Identify Safe Places
Choose a spot inside the home that locks from the inside and is away from possible weapons. Choose a place outside the home too, such as a supportive neighbor’s house. Children should know where to go if they feel threatened.
Line Up Support
Tell trusted neighbors, friends, or family how they can help in an emergency, and memorize key phone numbers. Decide in advance where you’ll go: a friend or relative who will be discreet, or a shelter. If the latter, find out which shelters are in your area and what services they offer. If possible, seek out one that provides comprehensive survivor services so you can be supported across all aspects of your journey.
Pack a Go-Bag
In your go-bag, include:
- • Clothes, toiletries, and medications
- • Cash and written phone numbers for safe contacts
- • ID, Social Security card, birth certificate, passport, and insurance information
- • Electronic copies of important documents, where possible
Keep the bag safely secured and somewhere the abuser won’t find it, or leave it with someone you trust. A burner phone may also be useful.
Keep the Plan Itself Hidden
Survivors usually can’t post a safety plan at home the way people might with other kinds of plans. It should be memorized or stored where the abuser can’t reach it.
Document the Abuse
Photos, messages, police reports, and medical records can matter later in custody or divorce proceedings. Consider sending images to a friend for safekeeping.
Think About Technology and Routines
Abusers can use technology to extend control. Consider a new phone, changed passwords, cleared browsing history, and varied routes. Be careful with shared calendars.
Explore Legal Options
Learn about restraining orders and what involving police would mean. If you have children or are married, consult a custody or divorce lawyer as soon as possible.
How To Protect Yourself After Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Leaving doesn’t end the need for planning. Stalking is not unusual after a relationship ends, so the plan needs to keep going.
Limit What Your Abuser Can Learn
Take the following steps to prevent your abuser from stalking or otherwise harming you:
- • Ask banks, utilities, medical providers, your employer, family, and your children’s school not to share information about you.
- • Consider a new phone number and a PO box.
- • Open new accounts, ideally at a different bank, and remove yourself from shared accounts.
Plan for Specific Scenarios
Decide what you’ll do if the abuser follows you while you’re driving, such as heading to a safe public place. Teach children what to do if the abuser approaches them or takes them, such as calling 911 or a trusted adult.
Track Troubling Behavior
Keep a journal of any attempts to contact, threaten, or come near you or your children.
Keep Updating Your Plan
When circumstances change, revise the plan. An advocate can help review what’s working.
Recovering and Rebuilding
Safety after leaving is more than staying out of danger. It’s the presence of choice, opportunity, and respect:
- • Emotional recovery. Survivors and children may experience anxiety, depression, trouble sleeping, jumpiness, or numbness. Talking, journaling, exercise, creative outlets, and counseling can help. Reconnect with people and activities at a manageable pace.
- • Stability. Many survivors face poverty, homelessness, or job loss after leaving. Safe housing, employment, childcare help, and financial independence reduce the risk of returning to an abuser or being exploited again. Transitional housing and job training programs help build that foundation.
- • Autonomy and community. Abusers often erode independence by limiting money, transportation, health care, or social contact. Small decisions, like where to live or how to spend time, help rebuild confidence. Reconnecting with supportive people counters isolation.
Don’t Plan Alone
It’s nearly impossible for one document to capture every question and resource a survivor might need, which is why trained advocates are recommended. Holistic domestic violence programs like those offered by Connections for Abused Women and their Children (CAWC) in Chicago can help you create a safety plan and offer shelter, counseling, and legal referrals. Survivors elsewhere can begin with a hotline such as the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233), or call 911 if in immediate danger and it is safe to do so.
Remember: thoughtful planning now is the first step toward a safer future.
Be Safe and Support Survivor Safety With CAWC
At CAWC, we believe that everyone has a right to a life free from abuse and violence. Our mission to end dating and domestic violence in all demographics is rooted in education, service, and advocacy. In addition to working toward broader social change, we provide empowerment-based and trauma-informed support in the form of shelter, counseling, and advocacy for individuals and their children affected by intimate partner violence.
If you or someone you know is actively experiencing the impacts of abuse or sexual violence, don’t hesitate to call our 24-hour crisis line at 773-278-4566. For nonemergency support, reach out through our contact form today.
Want to help us protect more survivors and children? You can impact the life of a domestic violence survivor or a child who witnessed domestic violence by donating to CAWC today or by supporting our work in other ways.