Creating Accessible Services for Disabled Survivors of Domestic Abuse

Disabled women are twice as likely to experience domestic abuse as non-disabled women, with 14.7% of disabled women experiencing domestic abuse in the year ending March 2019, compared to 6% of non-disabled women. [1]

Ruth Bashall is Policy and Projects Advisor at Stay Safe East, which she co-founded in 2010. Stay Safe East are a London-based organisation and the only user-led service in the UK supporting disabled survivors of domestic abuse, gender-based violence and hate crime. Ruth manages the policy team and leads on developing new projects for Stay Safe East, continuing the work she has been doing advocating for disability rights over the last 30 years.

In this video, Ruth shares some of the challenges disabled women face when accessing support from services. She discusses what an accessible and inclusive service model looks like and gives insights into supporting disabled survivors of abuse using an intersectional gendered approach.

[1] The Office for National Statistics, Domestic abuse victim characteristics, England and Wales: year ending March 2020 (2020)

Disabled women are twice as likely to experience abuse than non-disabled women. In this video, Ruth Bashall, Policy and Projects Advisor, at Stay Safe East shares some of the challenges disabled survivors of domestic abuse face and what changes need to be made to make services more accessible.