Section I
For the Person in an Abusive Relationship:
How to Find Help and Plan for Your Safety
If you are in an abusive relationship, you probably know more about planning for your safety and assessing your risks than you realize. Being in a relationship with an abusive partner - and surviving - requires considerable skill and resourcefulness. Any time you do or say something as a way to protect yourself and your children, you are assessing risk and enacting a safety plan.
Safety planning is a process of identifying options, evaluating those options, and developing a detailed plan to reduce your risk when confronted with the threat of harm or actual harm. The value of any safety plan depends on identifying options that are meaningful and workable for you. This section of the guide helps you to identify sources of help. In this section, you will find descriptions of the kind of help available from national and community programs for domestic violence as well as sources of help from the Federal workplace, including information about the personnel flexibilities available to employees.
Since abusive encounters often allow little time for careful thought, many people find it helpful to think through possible situations before they happen and to develop a comprehensive plan for how to respond. The Personalized Safety Checklist provided on page 16 is a tool you may want to use to expand and record your own safety plan.
If you are planning to leave your partner or have already left, be aware that abusers often escalate their violence during periods of separation, increasing your risk for harm, including serious and life-threatening injury. Whether you are currently with your partner or not, a safety plan can reduce your risk of being harmed.
Know the National and Community Resources That Can Help
National Hotline
The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) is available 24 hours a day to provide immediate crisis intervention, information, and referrals. The hotline will refer callers directly to the appropriate kind of help in their own communities, including emergency services and shelters. Also, counselors can offer information, referrals, and counseling to survivors of domestic violence, family members, neighbors, and the general public. The TDD number for the hearing impaired is 1-800-787-3224. The hotline is prepared to help Spanish speaking callers and other non-English speakers.
Local Domestic Violence Programs
Local domestic violence programs, which provide free and confidential assistance to persons in abusive relationships and their children, can be a vital resource. Either your Employee Assistance Program at work or the National Hotline can help you find local domestic violence programs. Emergency safety services, such as shelters and 24-hour crisis hotlines, may also be available. You don't have to stay in a shelter to get help from a domestic violence program. Most programs provide a full range of non-shelter related services to people in abusive relationships. Domestic violence programs are generally well-informed about the services available to help you, so ask them for information and referrals. Referrals are frequently available for:
- health-related services including primary care, family planning, pre-natal care, routine exams, pediatric care, and testing for sexually transmitted diseases;
- low-income housing programs, relocation assistance;
- alcohol/other drug recovery programs, mental health services, children's counseling services, parenting programs, support groups through women's centers, grief groups, and Parents Without Partners;
- child protective services;
- culturally-specific services and groups, including services and information regarding immigrants' rights;
- educational opportunities, including high school graduate equivalency or college degree programs, English as a second language classes, trade schools, and scholarship, grant, and stipend programs; and
- programs that assist with job training and placement, professional development, resume writing, interviewing skills, and job searches.
Domestic Violence Advocates
Domestic violence advocates may be available through a local domestic violence program or through the court. A domestic violence advocate may be able to tell you about your legal rights and the services available in your community, help you weigh the pros and cons of using the court system, and "walk you through" the entire process of making a police report, obtaining an order of protection, filing a violation, or petitioning for custody. In addition to giving you good information, advocates can often accompany you to court, to the police station, or to social services and provide you with practical and emotional support. They can refer you to community agencies for help with the wide range of issues you may face.
Getting help from someone who has experience working with victims of domestic violence and who knows how to work with the different systems, including the police, the courts, local hospitals and social services, can make things a lot easier for you. However, advocacy services vary from one community to another. Some advocates are able to provide more assistance than others. If you need help in locating a domestic violence advocate, ask your Employee Assistance Program counselor for assistance. If you cannot find an advocate, have a trusted friend or family member accompany you to dealings with the court system.
Other Resources in Your Community
It's important to develop as much support as you can. Think about contacting the following people to find out what kind of help you can get:
- Counselor, social worker, therapist
- Gynecologist and other physicians
- Friends, family, neighbors
- Religious congregation member, minister, rabbi, priest, or other religious leader
- Women's centers or senior centers
- Teachers, school counselors, Parent/Teacher Associations
- Department of Social Services caseworker
Know Your Federal Workplace Resources
- Yoursupervisors can help you implement a safety plan by using a variety of management tools available in the Federal personnel system. For example, they may be able to adjust your time and place of work, and you may be eligible for one of several types of leave if you need to take time off. Your supervisor, at your request, can initiate a team response from different departments within your agency to implement a safety plan at work.
- Your security office can help you implement your safety plan at work and advise you about how to stay safe off-duty. At work, for example, security personnel may keep a photo of the abusing person at the guard's desk or escort you to and from your car. Your agency may also have an interdisciplinary workplace violence team to help you.
- Your Employee Assistance Program can offer you short-term counseling and referral to community resources. They can help you get in touch with a local domestic violence program, financial counseling, programs for children, or whatever services you need. This program is free and confidential.
- Your unioncan be a source of support, advice, information, and referral.
- Your co-workers can help you by screening phone calls and keeping an eye out for your abuser.
- Your human resources office can explain the terms of your pay and leave benefits and other workplace flexibilities in place at your agency that you may wish to explore. The human resources office can also answer questions about performance or conduct issues.
- Your health unit in addition to being a source of treatment for minor injuries, can refer you to appropriate resources in your community for help with domestic violence.
* Note: Anyone you turn to in the workplace for help should honor your requests for confidentiality. However, be aware that you cannot always get absolute assurances since there are limits to confidentiality where a threat of danger exists.
Turn to someone at the worksite you trust for help.
When Alice's husband, who had been hitting her for several years, began threatening her daughter, she knew she had to take action. After some internal debate about where to turn, Alice decided to talk to her union representative, Rose, who had helped her with a workplace problem some years ago. Rose listened to Alice with warm concern and immediately called the National Domestic Violence Hotline to get the latest information on community programs for victims of violence. She also told Alice that the agency's Director of Security had helped other employees in her situation by advising them about their safety planning, and at Alice's request, set up an appointment for her. Rose gave Alice a copy of a union brochure on domestic violence, writing down the phone numbers for the hotline and her own office for Alice's reference.
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Know Your Federal Workplace Options and Flexibilities
If you are in an abusive relationship, there are powerful tools at your Federal workplace to protect your safety and help you to rebuild your life. You may need time off to go to court, find a new place to live, or recover from injuries. You may need a different workspace or a different schedule to keep the abuser from tracking you down on the job. These tools are not labeled specifically as "domestic violence" measures, but are simply the flexibilities and entitlements available to every Federal employee under appropriate circumstances.
First Consider Paid Leave Options
There are many leave options available for Federal employees. Check with your supervisor or your human resources office for your agency policy and procedures for requesting leave.
Annual Leave
As a full-time Federal employee, you earn 13 to 26 days per year of annual leave. This leave is yours to use for whatever purpose you wish; do not hesitate to schedule your leave with your supervisor if you feel you need it.
Sick Leave
You have the right to use your accrued sick leave when you are incapacitated and cannot perform your duties due to illness, injury, or to get medical care.
Sick Leave for Family Medical Care
As a Federal employee, you may use specified amounts of your sick leave to give care to a family member with an illness or injury. The regulations cite some of the specific conditions under which sick leave can be used for family care -- for physical or mental illness, injury, pregnancy, childbirth, medical, dental or optical exam or treatment, or to make arrangements for or to attend the funeral of a family member.
Specifically, full-time employees can use up to 40 hours of sick leave each year for family medical care without regard to their sick leave balance. For employees who maintain an 80-hour balance in their sick leave accounts at all times, an additional 64 hours can be used each year for family care.
Leave Transfer
Leave transfer allows Federal employees to voluntarily donate annual leave to other Federal employees who have exhausted their own leave and have a medical emergency, or who need to care for a family member who has a medical emergency. Any Federal employee can apply to become a leave transfer recipient, but may accrue no more than 40 hours of annual and sick leave while using shared leave. For a personal medical emergency, you must use your annual and sick leave before applying for leave transfer. For a family medical emergency, you must use your annual leave and the sick leave flexibilities for family medical care before applying for leave transfer. If your agency operates a leave bank program, there may be other options available. Check with your human resources office.
Advanced Sick or Annual Leave
Specifically, full-time employees can use up to 40 hours of sick leave each year for family medical care without regard to their sick leave balance. For employees who maintain an 80-hour balance in their sick leave accounts at all times, an additional 64 hours can be used each year for family care.
Help is available for the employee who doesn't want
the supervisor and co-workers to know about the situation.
Sarah did not want her co-workers to know that she was struggling to leave an abusive relationship. However, she needed help. She made a confidential appointment with her agency's Employee Assistance Program (EAP). The EAP counselor referred her to a community program for victims of domestic violence, and offered to see Sarah on a drop-in basis if she needed additional support. Later, Sarah chose to use her annual leave for court appearances and related business because she didn't want to talk about the situation with her supervisor. When her children began showing signs of stress, she used her sick leave to take them to the pediatrician and children's guidance clinic, saying only that she was taking the children to medical appointments.
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Unpaid Leave Options are Available
Family and Medical Leave Act
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) gives employees nationwide the option to use up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period (beginning when the employee first uses the leave) for specified family and medical needs.
As a person who is in an abusive relationship, you may suffer from effects of physical and emotional abuse that require medical attention. Your children or parents may also be abused, or may suffer from the stress of living in a violent home. You may request family medical leave to care for your children or parents who are suffering from a serious health condition.
Leave Without Pay
Another leave option is Leave Without Pay (LWOP). Since LWOP is considered an approved absence, you must request it. The granting of LWOP is at the discretion of the agency in most cases.
Alternative Work Arrangements Can Offer Safety and Support
Telecommuting
In some cases, you are best protected if you are able to report to a different work location, if just for a short time. Telecommuting can be a key part of your safety plan. More and more, agencies are offering telecommuting options to employees, so together with your supervisor and human resources staff, this may be easy to arrange, at least for a short period, to protect both your safety and the safety of the workplace. Under a telecommuting arrangement, you may have the option to work at home or at a "satellite" or telecenter (an alternate office setting for employees who otherwise would travel a longer distance between home and work) for all or part of the work week.
Ask your human resources office about the possibility of using a telecenter in your area. Telecenters are being established across the country at a growing rate and are currently available to Federal employees in Atlanta, Georgia; King of Prussia, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Seattle, Washington, as well as numerous cities in California and the Washington DC metropolitan area.
Temporary Job Assignment
In situations where telecommuting cannot be accommodated, consider asking for a temporary assignment that can place you in a different location for the time necessary to achieve safety.
Work Schedule Flexibilities
Sometimes the best solution is the simplest one, which can be the case with alternative work schedules. If you are juggling different demands, life transitions, or have safety concerns, a flexible work schedule, which adjusts when your work day begins and ends, may be a very suitable arrangement. A compressed work schedule, which allows you to work longer days and complete an 80-hour pay period in less than ten days, may be better for your situation. If you need more time away from work, other options worth exploring are part-time employment or job sharing. Job sharing is a form of part-time employment where two part-time employees share the duties of a single full-time position.
Ask For Help
Once you've identified the resources that can help you, enhance your safety even more by talking to them, before there is a crisis, to find out what they are willing and able to do for you. The more specific you are with them about what you need, the more likely it is that you'll get the help you're looking for. That way, you will know in advance if you have a place to stay, a source of financial assistance, or a trusted person to keep copies of your important papers.
As a Federal employee, you can take comfort in knowing that there are protections in place to keep you from being retaliated against or terminated for asking someone at work for help. And as this guide explains, there are many forms of help available in the Federal workplace, so don't hesitate to ask for the help you need.
It can sometimes be hard to ask for help. But you deserve help, and you may need it. And most people really do want to help. No person in an abusive relationship has control over her partner's violence, but people can and do find ways to reduce their risk of harm.
Write Out a Safety Plan
Writing out a safety plan helps you to evaluate the risks and benefits of different options and identify ways to reduce risks. The checklist that follows can help you in your planning by pointing out issues you may need to address. There's no right or wrong way to develop a safety plan. Use what applies. Add to it. Change it to reflect your particular situation. Make it your own, then review it regularly and make changes as needed. You don't have to figure it all out on your own. Ask your Employee Assistance Program counselor at work or a domestic violence advocate for help.
Remember that abusive partners tend to escalate violence when their partners try to separate. With this in mind, make special efforts to keep your written safety plan away from your partner. If you're unable to find a safe place to keep a written safety plan -- where your partner will not find it -- ask a friend to keep a copy for you. If you're working with your local domestic violence program, you can ask them to keep a copy of your plan for you. Whether it's safe to write down your plan or not, it's still important to make one. Ideally, you will have your safety options committed to memory.
Personalized Safety Plan 
Being ready for a crisis
Planning to leave
- If I decide to leave, I will __________________________________________. (Practice how to get out safely. What doors, windows, elevators, stairwells or fire escapes would you use?)
- I can keep my purse and car keys ready and put them _____________ in order to leave quickly.
- I will leave money and an extra set of keys with _________________ so I can leave quickly.
- I will keep copies of important documents or keys at _____________________.
- If I have to leave my home, I will go ____________________.
- If I cannot go to the above location, I can go __________________________________.
- The domestic violence hotline number is _____________. I can call it if I need shelter.
- If it's not safe to talk openly, I will use ______________ as the code word/signal to my children that we are going to go, or to my family or friends that we are coming.
- I can leave extra clothes with ___________________.
I can use my judgment
- When I expect my partner and I are going to argue, I will try to move to a space that is lowest risk, such as _________. (Try to avoid arguments in the bathroom, garage, kitchen, near weapons, or in rooms without an outside exit.)
- I will use my judgment and intuition. If the situation is very serious, I can give my partner what he wants to try and calm him down. I have to protect myself until I/we are out of danger.
- I can also teach some of these strategies to some/all of my children, as appropriate.
- I will keep important numbers and change for phone calls with me at all times. I know that my partner can learn who I've been talking to by looking at phone bills, so I can see if friends will let me use their phones and/or their phone credit cards.
- I will check with ___________and _______________ to see who would be able to let me stay with them or lend me money, if I need it.
- I can increase my independence by opening a bank account and getting credit cards in my own name; taking classes or getting job skills; getting copies of all the important papers and documents I might need and keeping them with __________________.
- Other things I can do to increase my independence include: ________________________________________________.
- I can rehearse my escape plan and, if appropriate, practice it with my children.
- If I have a joint bank account with my partner, I can make arrangements to ensure I will have access to money.
I can get help
- I can tell _________________ about the violence and request that they call the police if they hear noises coming from my house.
- I can teach my children how to use the telephone to contact the police and the fire department. I will make sure they know the address.
- If I have a programmable phone, I can program emergency numbers and teach my children how to use the auto dial.
- I will use _______________ as my code word with my children or my friends so they will call for help.
After I Leave
- I can enhance the locks on my doors and windows.
- I can replace wooden doors with steel/metal doors.
- I can install security systems including additional locks, window bars, poles to wedge against doors, an electronic system, etc.
- I can purchase rope ladders to be used for escape from second floor windows.
- I can install smoke detectors and put fire extinguishers on each floor in my home.
- I will teach my children how to use the phone to make a collect call to me if they are concerned about their safety.
- I can tell people who take care of my children which people have permission to pick them up and make sure they know how to recognize those people.
- I will give the people who take care of my children copies of custody and protective orders, and emergency numbers.
At Work and in Public
- I can inform security, my supervisor and/or the Employee Assistance Program about my situation. Phone numbers to have at work are _______.
- I can ask __________________to screen my calls at work or have my phone number changed.
- When leaving work, I can ______ ____________________________.
- When traveling to and from work, if there's trouble, I can__________.
- I can ask for a flexible schedule.
- I can ask for a parking space closer to the building.
- I can ask to move my workspace to a safer location.
- I can ask security to escort me to and from my car.
- I can change my patterns to avoid places where my partner might find me, such as ______________________, (stores, banks, laundromats).
- I can tell ______________ and ____________________ that I am no longer with my partner and ask them to call the police if they believe my children or I are in danger.
- I can explore the option of telecommuting with my supervisor and human resources office.
With an Order of Protection
- I will keep my protection order_________, where I know it will be safe.
- I will give copies of my protection order to police departments in the community in which I live and those where I visit friends and family.
- I will give copies to my employer, my religious advisor, my closest friend, my children's school and day care center and____________.
- If my partner destroys my protection order or if I lose it, I can get another copy from the court that issued it.
- If my partner violates the order, I can call the police and report a violation, contact my attorney, call my advocate, and/or advise the court of the violation.
- I can call a domestic violence program if I have questions about how to enforce an order or if I have problems getting it enforced.
Items to Take When Leaving
- Identification for myself
- Children's birth certificates
- My birth certificate
- Social Security cards
- School/vaccination records
- Money, checkbook, bank books, cash cards
- Credit cards
- Medication/prescription cards
- Keys house, car, office
- Driver's license/car registration
- Insurance papers
- Public Assistance ID/Medicaid Cards
- Passports, work permits
- Divorce or separation papers
- Lease, rental agreement or house deed
- Car/mortgage payment book
- Children's toys, security blankets, stuffed animals
- Sentimental items, photos
- My Personalized Safety Plan
My Emotional Health
- If I am feeling down, lonely, or confused, I can call _________ or the domestic violence hotline_________________.
- I can take care of my physical health by getting a checkup with my doctor, gynecologist, and dentist. If I don't have a doctor, I will call the local clinic or ___________ to get one.
- If I have left my partner and am considering returning, I will call ____________________ or spend time with __________ before I make a decision.
- I will remind myself daily of my best qualities. They are: ________________________ ________________________ ________________________
- I can attend support groups, workshops, or classes at the local domestic violence program or __________________ in order to build a support system, learn skills or get information.
- I will look at how and when I drink alcohol. If I am going to drink, I will do it in a place where people are committed to my safety.
- I can explore information available on the websites listed in the back of this guide.
- Other things I can do to feel stronger are: __________________________________
Remember, there are many obstacles to achieving safety or to ending a relationship with a violent partner, and the choices women confront are not risk-free.
Decisions that are beneficial in the long-run, such as leaving the abuser or obtaining a protective order, can actually increase immediate danger for the woman and her children. Safety planning is the process of evaluating the risks and benefits of different options and identifying ways to reduce risks.
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