1. Education Wife Assault
Access is More than Just a Ramp: Understanding Violence Against Women with Disabilities and Deaf Women
Fran Odette, MSW
(9/28/2004, 1 pm ET)

2. What are you hoping to get from this workshop? Please check one:
more information about violence against women with disabilities/Deaf women
b) I am not sure – open to the experience
c) ways to improve access to my services for women living with disabilities and Deaf women who are abuse survivors.

3. EWA Mandate
Our mission is to inform and educate the community about the issue of wife assault/woman abuse in order to decrease the incidence of physical, psychological, emotional and sexual violence against women and the effect that woman abuse has on children.

4. Workshop Objectives
Understand how violence against women living with disabilities and Deaf women is accomplished through a range of individual and institutionally supported acts and practices.
Examine the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation and physical and mental ability as impacting on the acceptance and perpetuation of violence against women with disabilities and Deaf women.
Assess and understand the role of individual and organizational efforts in maintaining or dismantling the systems of exclusion and domination over women with disabilities and Deaf women.

5. Understanding Our History:
Different ways of looking at disability:
Medical Model
Rehabilitation Model
Social Model

6. Making Linkages Forms of Oppression Agent group Target Groups
Common elements across oppressions
Socialization process
Increased access to social power and privilege
People living with disabilities fit into all communities

7. What is Abuse?
Abuse is any behavior or pattern of behavior used to coerce, dominate or isolate the other partner.
Use of any form of power used by one partner over the other to maintain control within the relationship.
Women living with disabilities and Deaf women experience similar forms of abuse to non-disabled women and Hearing women.
Living with a disability may mean we experience more specific forms of abuse in the context of disability and Deafness.

8. What the Statistics tell Us
39% of women with disabilities will experience physical or sexual assault at the hands of their partners, versus 29% of women without disabilities.
60% of women with disabilities are likely to experience some form of violence in the course of their adult lives, versus 50% of women without disabilities. 
Children with disabilities are 1.5 to 5 times more likely to experience sexual abuse than children without disabilities.
Anecdotal evidence has revealed that women with multiple disabilities are more vulnerable to violence than women with only one disabling condition.
83% of women with psychiatric disabilities who are institutionalized are likely to experience some form of violence, versus 68% of women living in the community.

9. Women with Disabilities: Who are we talking about:
Mobility and Agility Disabilities
Visual Disabilities
Deaf, Deafened, Hard of Hearing and Late Deafened
Speech Disabilities
Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Learning Disabilities
Cognitive Disabilities
Acquired Brain Injuries
Psychiatric Disabilities

10. Types of Abuse: Physical Isolation: Restricting Freedom
Psychological & Emotional Abuse
Stalking/ Harassing Behavior
Threats & Intimidation
Economic Abuse
Sexual Abuse/ Harassment
Property Destruction

11. Forms of Abuse Experienced by WWD and Deaf Women
Physical abuse/Force or neglect within the context of care giving
Sexual abuse 
Denial of rights, necessities 
Acts by which social interaction/inclusion are denied  
Emotional/psychological abuse
Isolation
Economic abuse

12. RISK FACTORS Socio-cultural factors Environmental Services
Nature of Disability
Barriers to Reporting or Escaping Abuse
Attitudes
Policies and Procedures
Finances

13. Challenges in VAW service delivery:
Individual barriers
Organizational barriers
Systemic barriers
Ally building – VAW and Disability/Deaf organisations

14. Equity in service delivery:
Inclusion: moving away from the individual responsibility to a collective action
When does difference matter – acknowledging difference in accommodation to ensure inclusion in service
Legal remedies
Coordinating services – reducing the risk of women falling through the cracks