Domestic violence is never easy to seek help for, but what if you have nowhere to go that understands?

We ACT because they… listen and respond to disabled women experiencing domestic violence or hate crime

Stay Safe East is a leading organisation for disabled women experiencing domestic violence and disability hate crime. Yet, it is massively underfunded.

Stay Safe East combines high-level policy and research work, with day-to-day support and case work for the women that come through the doors, ensuring disabled women are heard and responded to.

And being heard and responded to is what makes a specialist service like Stay Safe East vital. Disabled women are twice to five times more likely to experience domestic violence than non-disabled women, but systematically experience greater barriers to services including not being believed or services not being accessible.

Disabled women also experience different forms of violence, such as withholding of care and medication, or the use of impairment to abuse the individual. Their experience of domestic violence is often on a continuum with disability hate crime and harassment experienced as a disabled person.

An important service at Stay Safe East is a Disabled Women’s support group where disabled women are able to talk about their experiences and support one another. This space is vital as it means people can discuss their lives without fear of people not understanding the disability dimension. Stay Safe East’s specialist services would be offered protection by the Istanbul Convention in Article 22.

They also provide essential training and advice to other services across the country to ensure they can support disabled women facing violence. This include collaborating on this guidance on how to improve support services for disabled women experiencing violence. Article 4 of the Istanbul Convention states that all women must have access to services, and it is only with insights on how to create and improve services for disabled women that this can be achieved.

We need to ensure services like Stay Safe East remain in place, to make sure no woman is left to face violence. The Istanbul Convention recognises this need and gives them the protections they deserve - and that is why we are campaigning for it.

ACT: Sign the Petition to ratify the Istanbul Convention and protect services like Stay Safe East

SUPPORT: Donate to Stay Safe East