ASHLEY BROMPTON: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Ashley Brompton with the Center on Victimization and Safety at the Vera Institute of Justice. I would like to welcome you to today's webinar. We are pleased to bring you this webinar as part of our 2020 End Abuse of People with Disabilities webinar series. Before we get started today, we have a few quick logistical items to go over. Today we will have American Sign Language interpretation, and we will [AUDIO OUT]. Can you hear me? SPEAKER: Sorry, Ashley, you cut out. We will have ASL interpretation and? ASHLEY BROMPTON: Apologies. We will have ASL interpretation and closed captioning. Hopefully, my audio will cooperate. If you would like to turn the captioning on today, please go to the Closed Captioning icon at the bottom of the screen. It looks like a little CC, and it says Closed Caption underneath it. 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Due to the nature of technology, we may experience technical difficulties with one or more of these things. If we experience a technical challenge, we will work to resolve it as quickly as we can. If the issue cannot be resolved for some reason, we may have to cancel the webinar. If that happens, we will follow up via email with additional information to all attendees. We plan to have time after the session for questions and comments. If you don't want to lose a question, feel free to put them in the Q&A pod at any time, but please note that we may hold them until the end of the session. We'll also be recording the session today. The webinar recording and all materials will be posted on the End Abuse of People with Disabilities website within two weeks. A record of attendance and the PDF of the PowerPoint will be available for download via a link in the chat pod. You should see that going into the chat pod soon. We will also post it at the end of the session. So if you're looking for materials or a record of attendance, you'll just click that link, and it will take you to an online folder where you can download both of those materials. And now onto the webinar. Our presenter today is Luana Nelson-Brown. I'm so excited to have her here with us today. She is the executive director of the Iowa Coalition for Collective Change, which is an organization that provides training and technical assistance to culturally specific anti-violence organizations, homicide response programs, and organizations and corporations wishing to adopt and implement anti-racist policies and procedures in an effort to end violence. She has an extensive history of leading violence prevention and intervention efforts on a local and national level. In 2003, Luana headed the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Program aimed at improving public safety by providing intense and necessary wraparound services to offenders convicted of serious and violent crimes as they were released from incarceration. In 2005, she steered state-wide efforts surrounding the Prison Rape Elimination Act to support incarcerated victims of sexual assault and their families. Shortly thereafter, she redefined the parameters of certification training by advocating for an increase in essential training modules for sexual assault advocates in Iowa. After a short time away from victim services, she continued to advocate for families and communities by providing education and assistance to individuals on risk management, the effects of exposure to oppression, and general improvement of quality of life. In 2011, she returned to victim services and started-- and supported several federal initiatives aimed at building capacity in organizations providing services to marginalized communities in Iowa. These communities included the African-American, Asian Pacific Islander, African immigrant and refugee, Meskwaki settlement, Deaf and hard of hearing, LGBTQ, and Latinx communities. She has over 25 years of experience in victim advocacy, activism, and systems change. She holds a Bachelor of Science in sociology from Tennessee State University and a Master of Science in public health from Meharry Medical College. Both are historically Black universities of which she is a proud alumna. Luana believes in an all-encompassing approach to end violence that acknowledges racism and all systemic oppression as violent acts that are directly correlated with societal epidemics such as homelessness, poverty, and premature death. And with that, I am so excited to turn it over to Luana. LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Thank you, Ashley. Hopefully, everyone can hear me OK. This is extremely exciting. Hello, everyone. I am a little overwhelmed, actually, as I look at the chat and see everyone and where you're from. I'm super excited. I see people here from my home state right now, Iowa. But I also see people from Tennessee, where, as you just heard in my bio, I went to school, some very fond memories there. But then I see people here from all over the country. And it is just warming my heart, just making me feel amazing that we're all here together, one big, happy family. I see some folks from Chicago, which is where I was born. So I feel a little bit better. I feel like I'm presenting to family today. So I hope you all feel the same way, because we've got a full hour and a half together, which is quite a long time. So as Ashley mentioned earlier, we'll be taking a couple of breaks every 20 minutes or so to allow the interpreters time to change, so we'll do that. But mostly, I want to make this as comfortable as possible. The people that are on that know me know that I'm not that traditional formal presenter, so I crack jokes from time to time. I'm a child of the '80s, so if I use '80s slang, and you're a millennial and you don't understand, just let me know and I will interpret that for you. But we'll just jump right in and do what we can. Hopefully, technology will cooperate with us today, and we'll go from there. Feel free, too, for sure-- if you have a question in the middle or as we're talking, or you have a comment, or something strikes you as an aha, feel free to go ahead and type that in the chat. I'm going to keep my eye on that chat pretty closely, because I want this to be more like a huge family discussion, like a cookout with 355 of your best friends, right? So we'll go from there. Oh, someone just asked, how about if you're a boomer? If you're a boomer, then I may be able to interpret for you. Otherwise, I'm going to reach out to our other boomers who are on and ask if they can interpret. But hey, I think we can do it. I'm pretty intergenerational, so I should be able to translate from Gen X to Boomer. I don't know if I can hit the Zoomers, but we'll do the best we can. Thank you so much, everybody. So enough about me, because I could take 20 minutes and just sit here and just chat with you guys, and you all will be like, can we get to the meat? So let's go ahead and jump right in. I'm going to share my screen. And if my staff were here, they would let you know-- oh, look, I did that seamlessly, which is not normal for me. Normally, I have a little pause there. I am going to open my chat so I can see you all, and we can jump right in. I have to say, it makes me feel great that everyone is interested in the topic today. We're going to be talking about disability inclusion in culturally specific work, which is something that we don't hear about on a regular basis, right? People who work in the disability arena tend to talk all the time about disability inclusion. And those of us who work in victim services, and work in culturally specific victim services, are very fluent in that. But it's not often that you hear about the intersections between disability, inclusion, and culturally specific work. So I'm excited to share that information with you guys today. So some of our objectives-- they're going to be quick and easy. We're not going overboard. We're just going to review the need for accessible services at culturally specific programs. We're going to talk about the benefits of increasing accessibility. And then we're going to outline some strategies that culturally specific programs can use to increase their accessibility. Now, for us here at the Coalition for Collective Change, we started right at the beginning thinking about disability as we were forming our organization. So I'm the first executive director of the organization after it became independent. And we knew right away that we wanted to live our values. And one of the main values of culturally specific programs is to ensure that services are reached at the margins. So we started creating our organization thinking about the margins of the margins. So you'll hear me say that term a lot throughout the presentation today, reaching the very, very edge of the margins. Because when you work in CSP, Culturally Specific Program, you know that when you reach the margins, then you end up creating services that are the best practice for everybody. And so it's no different when we talk about the intersections between disability and culturally specific services. So I'm super excited that you guys are here to learn about that today and talk and teach me something, because I don't know it all, right? So let's start out real quick with why this is important, even. Why do culturally specific services even need to have accessible services? OK, sorry, I didn't mean to do that. Why do we have to have that need? When you work in culturally specific programs, and you do culturally specific work, we spend an awful lot of time talking about the need for culturally specific services. And when we do, typically in the victim services arena, we find that folks with disabilities are typically lumped in with culturally specific services. And so here in Iowa, we have a 10% set aside with funding for culturally specific programs. And that includes not only ethnic, diverse programs but also disability programs. And in doing that, it's excellent to have that funding set aside, but by lumping everybody together, it also overshadows the intersectionality and the specific needs with that intersectionality. So culturally specific programs have a need to start thinking about how to create those accessible services. And it's not something that comes to our mind. We're not monolithic. Just like we're not monolithic communities, we're not monolithic programs. It's something that we have to intentionally think about and start to put some effort toward what does that need look like. So we're going to talk a little bit about that today. And I figured we'd start with a little bit of data. Now, as we started working and focusing and honing in on serving folks with disabilities, these were some of the statistics that I was presented with that really, really shocked me a lot. I'm looking at the chat real quick. "Surprised at the percentage for the Deaf. It sounds like one area of abuse you shared-- the statistics should include communication abuse, other abuses." Oh, and it got cut off. Sue, go ahead and finish typing that as well. Thank you. I'm surprised at the percentages as well. That's exactly where I was headed. These statistics shocked me. I knew that as people of color, as survivors of color, that we experience victimization at higher rates. I knew in some regions of my brain that folks with disabilities experience victimization at higher rates, but I was not at all prepared for these stats. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities-- seven times more likely to experience sexual assault. 49% of people with developmental disabilities are assaulted 10 or more times in their lifetime. And then this is what Sue mentioned. 20% of Deaf adults have experienced physical abuse by an intimate partner, and 15% have experienced forced sex in an intimate partner relationship. I knew that those numbers were high. I did not realize how high they were. And what was even more surprising for me was that, while I can give you these stats, and I can also give you stats on the rates of victimization with people of color, like 60% of Black women experience sexual assault before the age 18, what I can't tell you is what the stats look like for the intersection between race, disability, and victimization. So this just points to how invisible the population actually is. And I know when you work at a culturally specific program, you're used to talking about being invisible, right? We're used to having to fight to have our voices heard in the movement. And while we're used to doing that, we don't think about how invisible parts of our own populations are. So I just want to let you think about that for a minute and ingest some of these statistics, because we're going to need to take a quick interpreter switch. So I'm going to take a pause for a moment. And feel free to type something in chat while we do that. And I'm going to be quiet as we make that happen. OK, all right, thank you so much to the interpreters and all the hard work that they're doing. And they are ready. And you guys apparently are too, because there's a lot here in chat. So I'm going to scroll back just a little bit. I knew that this slide would start some talking, because it is definitely something to think about. So Sue said-- I'm going to reread Sue. And I have to scroll. Chat continuously goes. Sue Phillips said she's surprised at the percentage for the Deaf. "It sounds like one area of abuse that we shared the stats should include communication abuse, other abuses that give a better picture. It seems much full statistics covering all areas of abuses, including communication, which should be much more." Absolutely agree. And that's part of it, too, is some of our statistics-- we're not capturing data like we should be. And if we can't capture the data, as we all know, how do we then find solutions? So I think that's an excellent point, that capturing all areas of abuses, including communication, we should absolutely be looking into. And what better people to do that than those of us on this call today, is to start thinking about what that looks like. Gretchen says, "Once you include abuse of all kinds, and not just intimate partner, you see a lot higher." Absolutely. At the coalition here, we're actually the violent crime coalition in Iowa, so we get a lot of VOCA funding, and we work with survivors of all crimes, not just DA and SA. And one of the things that I'm sure everyone in Iowa is tired of hearing me say is that particularly for those of us in marginalized communities, victim services extends well beyond just DV and SA. We've got communication abuse. We've got homicide. We've got assault. Those are all things that culturally specific programs, while they only sometimes get funded for DA and SA, are actually working with survivors at all of the intersections, and the same with some of the disability serving organizations. We get funded for something specific, but we, in actuality, are covering all kinds of crimes. And so I think Gretchen's right. When we take that into consideration, what do the statistics then look like, right? I'm sure it goes up higher. Again, things that we do not typically capture in our data, and what better way to make people invisible than to not put them in the data? Oh, you guys have a lot. OK, let me scroll a little bit more. June says, "probably still underreported." Absolutely. While these are the stats that we have, we already know that reporting is lower in our communities. And it's even lower with folks with disabilities. So these numbers are probably much, much higher "I would love to know the statistics on Deaf adults that are people of color versus white Deaf people who have experienced DV." That's exactly what I'm talking about. I can't find that information. And what does that say? What are we communicating with our movement? What is the movement communicating when we can't even give that statistic? And I think my next slide actually is going to talk about why-- no, it's not. I lied. There's a slide coming that's going to talk about why culturally specific programs are really the best positioned folks to get this data, because we're already poised to think about what disparities look like, right? A quick example-- and Ashley, you're going to have to keep me in line when it comes to time, because they've got me on my soapbox now. A quick example-- we're doing some work with one of the school districts here in Iowa, and they released their annual data report. And in that report, they told us things like so many white children have been disciplined, so many Black children have been disciplined, but nowhere in those statistics did they tell us Black children are x times more likely to be disciplined. Because mainstream programs just don't typically think like that, right? But culturally specific programs do. And that's why culturally specific programs actually-- you all and we all are the best position to start to capture some of these questions that we have about statistics. Lana says, "Sadly, I'm not surprised at all when I see these statistics, because abusers are so good at what they do, and they'll use any vulnerability they can against people as a means of gaining power and control over them." Absolutely. And she can definitely relate to this. That is an excellent point and actually segues beautifully into my next slide, which talks about those factors that increase risk, right? We know how good abusers are at keeping people isolated. We know how good abusers are at using power and control. And when we're thinking about power and control as you're looking at this slide, think about that power and control wheel, and think about how more of an increased risk folks with disabilities are when we talk about that, when we talk about that power and control. There's a dependence on others when you have a disability. What does that look like when you're dependent on someone that does not have your best interests at heart, right? And you're reliant upon those around you, so that dependence increases that risk of victimization. Not knowing about basic rights also increases risk for victimization. And not to mention, if we're going to really have a real talk, and we start to talk about our own communities, do we really talk to folks with disabilities about healthy sexuality and healthy relationships? I know here in the African-American community, it's not something that we talk about all the time anyway, but we certainly do not talk about it to folks with disabilities. And if we're real honest, a lot of times we don't even think about folks with disabilities having sex, right? It's something that we just don't want to think about. I have a 13-year-old son who has-- who's on the autism spectrum. And as his mom, and him being 13 anyway, I don't want to think about him having sex. But it's extremely important that I do, right? Because I relinquish him to respite workers. I relinquish him to the school system. I relinquish him to day camps. And he's a sexual being just like the rest of us, 13 years old. So you know that time that puberty is upon us, right? But it's uncomfortable for us if we really, really think about it. It's not something that we talk about in our general population. I see WYC at Greater Cincinnati's Project CARE say that they talk about it. And I'm so excited that you do. And in fact, that's one of the reasons that we started building some partnerships. Because in the areas of victim services, we talk about healthy sexuality all the time, but still, we're a little nervous about being able to effectively use that plain language and be accessible to talk about it with folks with disabilities. On the flip side, you've got disability service organizations who are comfortable communicating with folks with disability but uncomfortable talking about healthy sexuality or sexual relationships. So all of that puts our portions of our population at risk, right? As we start to talk about culturally specific populations with disabilities, I want you to just think about that bullet that says learned compliance, right? As we're seeing across the country, we've got all sorts of protests happening right now because of the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many countless others that I'd be reading their names off for an hour. What does it look like for folks with disabilities who, for their entire lives, have learned to be compliant with authority figures, have learned to be compliant with the folks that are in charge of all of their basic needs? How do we start to think about what the intersection of racism and victimization looks like? And in order for us to do that, the first thing we have to do is think about victim services beyond DA and SA, right? Because now we're talking about violent crime, violent crime that we know they experience and that learned compliance puts them at a greater risk. Lack of control over life choices, a culture of institutionalization, no choice of where you live and with whom one lives-- I mean, that increases risk significantly. When we think beyond sexual assault, and we start to think about violent crime, when we start to even think about microaggressions-- which, microaggressions are really violent acts, right? Think about when we send our kids to school, and we put them in schools with teachers that are not from their own culture. What outlet do they have to talk about those experiences of homophobia, those experiences of racism? Kids without disabilities have struggle with finding places to go for those outlets. Kids with disabilities really don't have outlets, because we struggle to talk with them in our own homes, oftentimes. I'm going to pause just a little bit, because you guys are blowing up the chat. And I know I missed a whole lot. So I'm going to scroll back a little bit just to make sure I catch everybody. And all right, surprised at the percentage-- OK, got that. Oh, this scrolling-- I was going to say sex. That's not very professional, is it? Jacqueline said-- OK-- "Do you think it's because the demographics aren't asked?" I think that's back to the previous slide. I think it is because we do a bad job at collecting data. I think we do a bad job at asking our populations, and we do a really bad job at focusing. Because you can collect data in various ways. And culturally specific programs are excellent at that. They're excellent at doing storytelling and collecting data through storytelling. But it does take an intentional focus, the same way that we talk to mainstream organizations about collecting data on our ethnic populations, about people of color. We tell them they have to put a focus on collecting that data. It's the same thing for us when we're talking about the disability population. We have to focus on it. We have to set funds aside to do it. And we can do it in our own unique way. And we're actually the best people to do that, because we're already used to pulling that data that isn't normally captured. Let's see. "There is Casa de la Familia--" hi-- "nonprofit based in LA and Orange Counties. They provide many services and continue under COVID-19 low-cost telehealth services, both in Spanish and English, for victims of crimes such as elder and dependent adult abuse, DV homicide, sexual assault, human trafficking." You guys do it all. And there's a no-cost option. That is incredible and amazing. Now, think about how all encompassing that organization is, how all encompassing. And when you're completely accessible, that's what it looks like, right? I'm skipping ahead a little bit in my presentation, but that's what it looks like. And then, as you focus in on all of those services as it relates to the disability population, that just means your services are now even more inclusive, and they're the best services that can be there. I want to come visit you guys. "Would you be able to send out these statistics after the webinar and their citations?" Absolutely. You will get this presentation as well as my email address and these-- after this presentation. Let's see. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Jaclyn, OK. Kaleil, I think? "Interested in learning more about those who have experienced sexual assault." The citations will be emailed out. OK, just scrolling through. "Are there statistics on obstruction of services or neglect of care for people with physical disabilities by caregivers?" That is a really good question. And I'm actually going to ask Ashley to unmute herself real quick and see if Vera might have some information there. ASHLEY BROMPTON: This is Ashley. I am going to say we do have some information, and we will provide our contact information at the end of the session as well. I think, for today, let's focus on the presentation, and then these other questions we can try to get answered at the end or as follow-up just to make sure we don't run out of time. LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Sounds good, yeah. I wasn't expecting you guys to have so many. All right, thank you, Ashley, so much. And yes, Katie, you did hear correctly. 60% of Black women are sexually assaulted before the age 18. That's absolute information. I'm going to go ahead and pick back up, because we're also going to have a Q&A session at the end as well. Whoops. I did that, didn't I? So I'm going to have to cut it off, because otherwise I won't get you the rest of the information. And we haven't even gotten to strategies yet. So yeah, so something to think about-- the main thing from this slide to think about is some of the things that we struggle with as adults working in victim services are some of the same things that folks with disabilities struggle with, except they have no outlet to talk about it. How do I talk to my 13-year-old, who's on the spectrum, about racism? As he starts to drive, how do I have that come-and-talk that African- American moms have with their son? How do I have that with him in language that he can understand? And are we doing that? In victim services, are we having those conversations with folks with disabilities in our populations? So quick question for you guys, and maybe you can throw some answers up here in chat. Only 13% of victims of violent crime with disabilities receive support from victims services. Why do you think that is? I will give you just a couple of minutes to throw some things in chat. And I actually have to open my chat back up. Shame. Somebody said shame. Absolutely. "Aren't aware that they're being harmed," "limited resources," "barriers to equal access," "often not believed," "fear of being believed," "lack of comfort," "because their only caregiver is their perp," "communication," "no access--" all absolutely true, absolutely true-- "no outreach made to them," "inaccessible services." As I look at the statistic, everything that you guys are saying are all the reasons. As I looked at this statistic, I felt like it was a throwback to when I first started fighting for culturally specific services, right? Culturally specific services here in Iowa is barely at 10%. And when we're talking about services for violent crime beyond DA and SA, the number gets even smaller. So the same way that we fight and we advocate for culturally specific services to receive funding is the same way that we need to advocate for the population of folks with disabilities in our communities to receive funding. Because it's expensive, right? And when you make an investment, that's the only way that you can do services in the best way. You have to have resources to put towards some of those things. So one of the things that we figured out very early on as we started to intentionally focus on folks with disabilities in our populations is that we hadn't put in our budget nearly enough money for interpreters, right? Interpreters are expensive, as they should be. It's a specialized skill that they do. But if you don't have money in your budget for it, then how can you provide those services? So this is something that I feel like everybody on this call can go back to their states and advocate for. 13% receive support from victim services, both financially as well as the services themselves, right? So this is something that we need to really, really think about and pay attention to. "Services are unknown and clients don't know how to reach out." "Systems and organizations playing savior are not allowing folks to make autonomous choices." Absolutely, which is something that, as culturally specific programs, we know all too well. We talk about white savior syndrome all the time. It's the same way when it comes to ableism. And so if we don't pay attention, and if we don't intentionally focus on these populations, then this statistic will continue to exist or even increase, right? And it is time for us to switch interpreters, so I'm going to take a couple of minutes, regroup myself, and allow that to happen. And you guys just let me know, interpreters, when you're ready. Are we ready? Yes, OK, we're ready. Excellent. OK, so yeah, this is something that we have to pay attention to. Just like we tell mainstream organizations that they will miss providing services if they don't put an intentional focus on culturally specific services, it's the same thing that we need to do with folks with disabilities in our own populations. So you guys are super talkative. I'm going to pick it up just a little bit, because I'm looking at my time, and I don't want to miss anything for you guys. But please, feel free to continue to type in chat, and then we'll talk a little bit at the end as well. So this slide right here actually tells us what we already know, and that's disability doesn't discriminate, right? Every race, every ethnicity, every gender experiences disability. And this is an infographic to let us know why it's important for us to focus in on this area of the population in our own communities. If you look at just the American Indian, Alaska Native population, 3 in 10 have a disability. In the Black population, one in four have a disability. So we already know that folks with disabilities have higher rates of victimization. We already know that people of color have higher rates of victimization. So as we look at this infographic, it tells us how many folks we are probably missing in providing services to as we look at our own populations, right? So I know in my community, at least one in four folks have a disability. And if I'm not concentrating and providing intentional services to that population, then I'm missing a quarter of victims, right? So something that we need to really focus on and think about-- oops-- and think about. And this slide is helpful to let us know just how prevalent disability is in our own specific communities. And we understand one of our biggest values that we ascribe to as culturally specific programs is that when you reach the margins, the solutions you come up with are the best decisions for everybody. So when I'm training mainstream organizations, I typically talk about the-- I think it's called the curb cut is the actual term for it, but I usually call them sidewalk scoops. So very technical, because it looks like someone scooped up the sidewalk. But you know when you get to the corner, and there's a curb cut there? One of the ways that I explain to mainstream organizations this concept of "when you reach the margins, your solutions are the best decisions for everybody," is I use that example. And I ask folks, how many times have you used that curb cut, right? And people typically give me answers like they use it for when their babies are little, and they have strollers. That curb cut comes in handy. If you're a bike rider, that curb cut comes in handy so you don't have to lift your bike over. And then I tell them that that curb cut actually wasn't created for me and you. It wasn't created for folks who are mobile. It was an ADA regulation, and it was created for folks with disabilities. So that is one of the best examples I can think of to let people know that when you intentionally focus, and you put investments and you put intention behind reaching specific populations, you come up with a solution that works for everyone. That is no different in our own programs, in our culturally specific programs. We're already really good at reaching our communities. And if we focus at the very edge of the margins of our communities, not only do we make the best services for our communities, but we make the best services period. So basically, what I'm talking about is more accessible services that make our programs unstoppable, right? So Black, Indigenous, people-of-color organizations focusing on creating accessible services would, hands down, be the best program for every single survivor. And you can go to your funders with that, right? So one of the reasons that we need to do this is because we want to live up to our own values. And as long as we're not focusing on folks with disabilities, we can't say that we're living up to our own values, if that makes sense. So real quick, another question-- after we've gone through all of this, and you guys have come up with so many things, how do you think increasing the accessibility of services benefits the survivors that you serve, and how can it benefit your program? Throw just a couple of answers in chat, and I'll just grab just a few as you go, because I want to hear from you guys. OK, here we go. "Creating awareness of not being alone," absolutely. "Reduces isolation," absolutely. How could it benefit your program? "Has to start with staff and acknowledging our own bias," 100%. That's a benefit to the program. "We would actually meet our mission of serving everyone who needs services." That really hits the nail on the head right there, Kathleen. We pride ourselves in reaching the margins. And this would mean we would absolutely really be reaching the margins. "Survivors would feel more empowered to gain access to safety," absolutely. "Improve access for reporting," absolutely, and "allows us to have resources and tools that can cater to a wide variety of needs." That's also hitting the nail on the head, right? So some real easy benefits for creating accessible services for survivors is it allows survivors to not only receive accessible services but also receive culturally competent accessible services. So we're not leaving folks with disabilities to access mainstream populations that might be accessible but further re-traumatizes or harms them, because they are providing culturally competent services. And then, on the flip side, we're not leaving folks with disabilities to receive culturally competent services in a program that might not be fully accessible, might not have plain language, might not have interpreters, and then further causes traumatization, right? So the benefit is that we increase services for all of the survivors in our community, not just a certain small portion of our community. Because as we saw in the last slide, there are huge sections of our community that have disabilities. So we will be reaching them. Program benefits-- there's a lot. As we started doing this work at the coalition, there were so many perspectives that I had never considered at the intersection of DV, SA, racism, and ableism, and other violent crimes and racism and ableism. We have biases, too. Folks that work with folks with disabilities have biases as well. And so as you start to do this work, you start to get some new perspectives, right? And you start to find that there are victimizations that you hadn't even thought about. Your spaces become better as you start to do this work. Your spaces become more accessible. Your materials become more accessible. Your programs start to reach a wider audience. One of the things that happened when we started to do this work, which was a big learning curve for me, was accessible written materials. Hadn't thought about it. As you heard in my bio, I have two degrees, and so I tend to be very academic, and hadn't thought about how exclusionary that is through our communication, right? So one of my staff brought our code of ethics to me. And they said, look at this code of ethics, and look at this language. And I said, oh my god, who wrote that? And I didn't realize it was ours, right? So one of the benefits of focusing on this work is that our materials got a whole lot better. We also built some huge relationships with organizations in our community, which has been extremely beneficial, especially now during COVID, right? Because we know the death rates and the rates of infection with folks with disability and with Black, Indigenous, and people of color are extremely high. And as we're working in our silos, we're not able to come up with the best solutions to reaching the populations like we need to. But as we started to collaborate-- we're a victim services organization and started collaborating with disability serving organizations-- we were able to come up with some creative things that really did some really good for our population. And because of that, we now have long-standing relationships with those folks. So as the George Floyd protests started to happen, we started to see support come in from places that we never had before, just because we had started relationship building. And also, it's going to save you time and money. There is a study out there right now, and it's actually with for-profit organizations, Amazon, Google, Facebook. And they did a study where they had executives try to solve a murder mystery. And they put all of the executives in the room. They were all the same person, meaning white, male, cisgender, monolithic. And as they started to debrief and started to try to figure out what the answer to this murder mystery was, they were headed down the absolute wrong path, right? So they were not coming up with the solution. They introduced one person who was different, different in ideology, different ethnically, different in gender. And because that person was introduced in an inclusionary fashion, not in a tokenizing fashion, meaning they had the same amount of power, their chance at reaching the correct decision increased by 60%. So one of the things that I think we don't often think about is that when we are diversifying, we are saving time and money simply because we arrive at the best decision a whole lot faster than when we're monolithic, right? And culturally specific programs know that being monolithic is not a thing for our communities. But oftentimes, we don't think about that portion of the population with disabilities. We also found as we started to do this work that fundraising opportunities skyrocketed, because now we had a bigger pool of population of folks to fundraise with. It is a myth that marginalized communities do not give to organizations they care about. They do. They give to organizations that make a difference. And when your organization is focused and intentionally doing good things for all of your population, your fundraising opportunities go up, as do your funding opportunities. Now that we're working with folks with disabilities, there are grants that we never would have seen just focusing on victim services, and vice versa. And the chances to do some amazing work is almost unlimited. If we're really honest, we work in silos. The disability service organizations work in their silos. Victim service organizations work in their silos. But when we combine that work, we have opportunities to do some incredible, incredible things. Here in Iowa, we're working with Vera on a learning community. And all we did was pull together various organizations, pulled all of us out of our silos to start to work together. And this is a perfect segue to this next slide, which is some of the work that we've been doing here. So we pulled together several organizations to focus specifically on one of our marginalized-- our immigrant and refugee populations here in Des Moines. So we pulled together several programs. They became member agencies of ours. And we started to just have discussions, right? Talk about, what does it look like for us to work together? What does it look like to come out of our silos? And there were things that came up that I never even imagined would, like differences in what mandatory reporting looks like. In victim services, we tend to think of child abuse mandatory reporting right off the bat. But in disability serving organizations, mandatory reporting means a whole different thing. So what about confidentiality? So we started to have these conversations. And the next thing we knew, we started to be able to come up with some real solutions around that. I see Jess Morgan says that they have a lot of conversations about that, too. And then, just as we were getting our relationship building going, COVID hit, right? And we had to actually jump into action. So it was a good thing that we had started building those relationships, because the population that we were intentionally focusing on got hit really hard with COVID. I don't know how much you know about Iowa, but we're an agricultural state. We have lots of meat-packing plants, and lots of our immigrant and refugee populations work at those plants. And we started seeing some serious victimizations happen in that population just around work, being forced to go to work whether or not you were sick, being forced to go to work whether or not someone in your family was sick, and then if you chose not to go to work, not getting paid, and then facing evictions. And then we found that some of our mortgage companies were not being very helpful around those evictions, despite the fact that we have general assistance that's available for that. So those were one of the things that one of our programs brought to the table. And navigating these systems was quite difficult during COVID. One, you can't be in person. Two, a lot of the systems were not very responsive. So what we were able to do was come together as a group and start to tackle these things together. We were able to successfully get some additional funding for one of our organizations to hire a specific COVID case manager so that they could start tackling some of these institutions that were being nonresponsive. We were able to put together some structure around collection of the issues, because these were all issues that were new because the pandemic was new. And so we were able to start to collect some of those issues in a structured way, because let's face it. Our culturally specific programs barely have enough staff to do the work that they do currently, let alone add a pandemic on top of it. So our disability serving organizations and some of our culturally specific programs came together, and we just started to fight the battle together. And it was tough. But if we hadn't started the journey, and if we hadn't started to focus on this, then we never would have gotten a chance to do some of those things. Oh, there's a couple of other things I'm looking at in my notes that we were also able to do as the rallies and the riots broke out. We're the violent crime coalition. Every time there's a rally or a protest, those are actually homicide awareness events. Every time you hashtag #SayTheirNames, you're saying the name of a homicide survivor. So of course our work increased dramatically when it came to the rallies and the protests. And something that I noticed right off the bat, and probably never would have noticed had we not started doing this work, is that there were no sign language interpreters at any of the rallies. So we were able to jump in and provide support to-- oh, hi, Brianna. Thank you. See you later. We were able to provide support to some of the protesters, right? As they, in essence, did homicide awareness events, we were able to pay for interpreters, because we had already positioned our budget to have interpreters in. And we did that because we started this work. So almost every rally and protest here in Des Moines ended up having sign language interpreters. We also infiltrated Des Moines City Council meeting, which was virtual and on Zoom. And it was discussing a very important issue on racial profiling here in Des Moines. There were 1,100 people on this Zoom call-- it's a city council meeting, and it was open for public comment-- over 1,100 if you include people watching YouTube. And people were commenting on the plan that they were trying to put forth on racial profiling. And they did not have any captions, and they did not have any interpreters, and they did not have any translators. And so we were able to step in and call that out in the middle of the meeting. How are you going to talk about something as important as racial profiling and effectively exclude a huge portion of the population? So we did that, and I got a little bit of hate mail after, but whatever. We're used to that, right? But in the next Zoom meeting that they had, guess what they had? Captions and interpreters. So they're getting a little bit better at what they do. And I almost missed that we are ready to switch interpreters again. So I'm going to stop talking about Des Moines for a minute and let our interpreters switch. Just hit me in chat when you're ready. OK, we're ready. Thank you so much for that switch. Yeah, we had to call it out, but I will be perfectly honest. Had I not been intentionally focusing on the population, had I not been intentionally doing this work, I probably would have been right with the other 1,300 people that completely missed it. So that was a new opportunity, new areas, new spaces that we have now to help folks think about it, to help people think about beyond even DA and SA, to help folks in other arenas think about the importance of being accessible. So we are going to give you some strategies, if I can stop my mouse from doing really weird things. Sorry. And the strategies that we took here are simple. And the strategies that I'm going to give you today are simple. Usually, when we talk about becoming more accessible, the first thing people think about is, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to have a ton of money to make structural changes to my building, and that sort of thing. But no, the changes that we made were small changes that had big impact. And everyone's got to start somewhere. And the place to start simply is with conversations, conversations that can be hard but are necessary. I mean, we had to think about, and I encourage you all to think about, how is disability even viewed in your community? For Black and Indigenous and people of color, in some of our communities, disability is not talked about. If we're really honest, it's taboo to even talk about disability in your community. It's also taboo to talk about victimization in your community. So as you start to do this work, you're going to have to tackle that, right? What does your community think about disability? How much education and learning are you going to have to do? Is it negative in your community? Is it positive in your community? Is it neutral? And how is that going to have an impact on how you provide services, right? One of the agencies that we work with said that, hey, disability is not something that we talk about. It's more of a shame-based thing. And so in order to go into the community and advocate, they had to deal with that, right? How does your agency think about disability? That's something that we have to think about. And I'd like to, here, talk about, this is where you can really put your money where your mouth is. How are your funds allocated? Are you allocating for interpreters? Are you allocating for accessibility? How does your agency think about it? Like I told you before, that document that my staff brought to me that I didn't know was ours, and I looked at it in a different light as I started to think about plain language. And I thought, oh my god, who wrote this? Who wrote this? And it was me. So how does your agency really think about disability? How would you serve a survivor with a disability right now if they walked into your door? Is your space ready to accommodate? Are your materials accessible? And what are some of the biggest barriers and challenges when you're providing advocacy and other services for these survivors? So these are some things that we have to think about as we start to do this work. And I'll be honest with you. When we first started, I knew it was important to focus on the edges of the margins, but I didn't know what it looked like. So we just started with conversations. And it turns out that those conversations-- I'm going backwards-- were really what laid the groundwork for our work moving forward. Someone says, "That's a start on how and where we got our disability from." Excellent. Yeah, absolutely. Some of the other agency program needs-- you've got to review your policies, procedures, and practices. Are they inclusive for survivors with disabilities, or are they exclusionary? This is the same narrative for my culturally specific programs that we talk about with mainstream programs. It is the same thing. What do those policies look like? What do those procedures look like? We hear about this a lot with shelters and how shelters don't allow service animals, for example. That is an exclusionary, ableist policy, right? So as you start to address your agency's needs, I'd encourage you to look at your own agency's policies, procedures, and practices. And you might be surprised that there's some work to be done in your own agency. You can do an access review of your physical space. This is where we left off, actually, when COVID hit, right? So we are ready to do this review of our physical space and super excited, but we can't do it in person right now. But you know what we can do and what we did do instead? We started viewing our materials. And so whenever things get back to in person, one of the first things we're going to do is do an access review of our physical space. And I know that Vera helps with that. Review your budget. I am a strong, strong believer in putting your money where your mouth is. If you don't budget for the needs and being accessible, you're just not going to do it. It's just not going to happen. This is the same thing that we tell mainstream programs about culturally specific services, right? I am scrolling down. OK, there's graphic-- OK, my chat is doing weird things, you guys. I want to make sure I'm not missing anything. All right, excellent. You guys just keep chatting away. I'm going to keep going, though, here, and then hopefully I'll have enough time to maybe back up a little bit at the end so I don't miss some of this good work. The hardest part for me in doing a webinar is not communicating with you in chat. I just want to really just go in and just have that conversation. And then I remember, oh, yeah, I have actual information to give you. So bear with me. Partnering with other agencies-- this was the biggest part of the work that we did here, right? The disability organizations in your community can be such a good resource on how to increase access, because it's what they do every day. Also, they're a great resource on how to collaborate with people with disabilities. Because, like we know in our culturally specific programs, people with disabilities should be leading the charge, right? They should have a prominent position of power in our agencies, because they have the answers for their population. This is the same thing that we say when we're talking to mainstream organizations, right? But if you don't have relationships with the population, how are you going to do that, which is something that we hear mainstream organizations say to us all of the time. The way to do that is to partner. Partner with disability organizations. Partner with those organizations that are led by folks with disabilities. And that's what we've done here, and it's opened up an entire new access to a population that we hadn't even thought about. Someone's asking what training do we suggest for our advocates to learn basic ASL. I'm going to, at the end, answer that, because I think Ashley probably has a good answer for that as well as some other folks on. And at the same way that disability organizations can be a great resource, we can also be a great resource for them on how to be culturally competent and how to integrate a culturally competent framework into their work. So one of the organizations that we work with here in Iowa as the protests started to happen hadn't really thought a whole lot about being culturally competent. And in fact, very little of their staff were Black, Indigenous, or people of color. But now, just like everyone else, it is something that they're thinking about now. So they were able to reach out to us in our own little cohort to ask how to start the conversation in their agency. What should a statement on Black Lives Matter look like in their agency? And because we had already built that relationship, we were able to sit down and work together. So when you think about it, if disability serving organizations become more culturally competent, and culturally specific organizations become more accessible, now there's no wrong door for survivors, right? So we're increasing access twofold. When they reach out for assistance, they may come to a culturally specific program, or they may not. They may go to a disability serving program, or they may not. But wherever they go, the goal should be that none of those areas should be a wrong door. Jamie says, "I'm not sure how to best frame this question, but I'm curious to know how other folks here work within really limited definitions of disability. I so often see people who self-identify as disabled but don't have medical system validation or documentation or folks who have not a lot of visibility get turned down by support systems. How do you help the survivors you're working with navigate this?" You know what, Jamie? This is where those partnerships come in really handy, because we struggled with this as well. How do you help survivors navigate the limitations of disability? And we leaned on our partnerships with disability serving organizations to help us through that. And they leaned on us quite a bit to help them with navigating the systems of victim services, right? How do they get advocates? How do they get victim service advocates? How do they get court advocates? How do they get medical advocates? So when you bring the two partnerships together, I think that's really when you get the best services. And it's not easy. I'm not saying that this work is easy at all. So we are at final thoughts. Woohoo. And I made it to the last 15 minutes, which is where I wanted to answer some of your questions. And I know I missed a lot of them. So I may not be able to get to them all, but we'll try to get to a few. I actually do have-- whoops-- some final thoughts for you guys as we go. And these are some of the things that, if you didn't take anything else away from today, take some of these things away as our final thoughts. Culturally specific programs, I'm talking directly to you. You are absolutely, positively the best position to meet all of the needs of the people that we serve when you ensure that your programs are accessible and disability responsive. We are the experts. You are the experts in culturally competent services for your population. If you reach a little bit further out to the margins, you are in a prime position to literally say you have the best services in the country. This is important for your funders to know. This is important for your constituents to know. You are in that program. Mainstream organizations have a further way to go, because they not only have to become accessible, but they also have to become culturally competent. When you're working in your own population, you don't have to do that. You're just reaching the needs of all your population. And you can take small steps to make that change, looking at policies, practices, materials, your physical materials, and then making those connections, which is easy for culturally specific programs because we are a relationship people, right? That's one of the things that we know that's different with Black, Indigenous, and people of color, is that we are relationship based. And we are already doing things like sewing circles and book clubs, things that we know reach survivors but reach them in the way they need to be reached. If we do those same things, and we make them accessible to folks with disabilities, then we have created a model for every program in the country to provide best practices. And you know what? Always ask for help, because you're not in this alone. This is new for the entire country, pretty much. We're in our silos, and coming together is something new. Even data collection is new. So ask for help, and reach out and make those connections with each other. I'm super excited that a lot of people are in chat, and hopefully you will get that chat, and you'll be able to reach out to some people that maybe you didn't know before. So the last question I have for you guys before we do a little bit of Q&A is, can you tell me one thing that you learned today that you think you can apply to your work? I am going to ask if you could put that in chat, would be awesome for me. And I'm going to scroll as we do that. One thing-- is there any one thing that stuck out for you? "When you're intentional in reaching the edge of marginalized communities, you have the best services." Absolutely. "There are multiple starting points to this work." Absolutely. "Three specific things-- conversations, address program needs, partner with others." Absolutely. "Push cultural competency to be something more, to transform into cultural humility. Cultural humility consists of lifelong learners, self-evaluation, critical reflection. Be aware. We have a responsibility to create a welcoming space and make room for openness for the human experience and ongoing growth." Absolutely. "Increase communicating about mandated reporting, budget accommodations." Yay, you guys learned stuff. Whoo. Now, those of the people here from Iowa that know me know that I do this a lot. I was also a cheerleader. So that makes me feel really, really good. I know I pushed a lot of information on you, but it sounds like you guys actually really, really heard what we said, and you're taking things away. I'm super excited about that. "60% of Black women-- Black women, that is-- 60% of Black women are assaulted before the age of 18." Absolutely. So I am going to actually ask Ashley if she would unmute and help me know if I left anything out. I didn't look at Q&S, so if you could help me with that, Ashley, too, that would be great as we do this final Q&A part. Are you there, Ash? ASHLEY BROMPTON: This is Ashley. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much, Luana. That was an amazing presentation. And it felt like, I think, we all learned something from this, and if everyone's like me, learned a bunch from this. So I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today and also just how appreciative I am of your spirit in this moment and bringing that to our audience. I can't say thank you enough for that. We have a lot of questions, and we don't have a lot of time. So for those of you who ask a question that maybe got missed or that we are unable to address, we have Luana's email address on the screen, so hopefully you can reach out to her. We can also put our CVS email address in the chat, so you could reach out to us at CVS, and we can hopefully get your questions answered. Before we go to questions, I want to pause for just a moment to do one last interpreter change. OK, so we got a lot of questions, some of which you addressed throughout the presentation, but there's quite a few that are new questions. And one of them is, you talked about-- when you were talking about the factors that increase risk, you talked a little bit about how people with disabilities who also have other identities may not have a space to process or have an outlet for talking about those identities. You gave examples of racism and homophobia. And one of our participants was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on what you mean when you say an outlet to process those identities or the experiences that they have. LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Sure, absolutely. The best example I can give for that is to talk a little bit about my own experience. As I said, I have a 13-year-old son who's on the spectrum, on the autism spectrum. And he is a Black male child in Iowa, right? And we live in a suburban area that is predominantly white. In our school district, there are only three Black teachers in the entire district. There are no Black administrators in the entire district. And there's only one person of color on the school board. As a result, there are lots of instances of microaggressions. There are lots of instances of outright racism. We're working with the district right now, and they-- one of the principals at one of the schools in the district outright said that they don't believe that Black history belongs as part of the curriculum for the entire district. So I know that my son feels that. I know he understands that something is wrong. I know he feels microaggressions. But he doesn't have an outlet to talk about it, because his teachers, his administrators-- while they may be competent in communicating with him on his disability, they certainly aren't comfortable or competent talking about his experiences of microaggressions and racism. They don't even know that exists. So that's what I mean when I say there's no outlet. And if we're in one of those communities where working with our folks with disabilities is taboo, where we just put them to the side and assume that they're doing OK, and we further isolate them at home, then they don't even have us to come and talk about that with. That's one of the strategies that we tell our kids when we talk about bullying and victimization, is come home and talk to your children about their day. Well, when you're not talking to your children about their day because they have a disability, then where do they go to talk about those experiences that we know they are having around racism and homophobia and other things? So that's what hopefully answers that a little bit. ASHLEY BROMPTON: Great. Thank you so much. The other thing you talked about is this idea that having people at the table in your decision- making process can help you make change faster, more economically, and better overall change. Can you provide an example of what that might look like for an organization looking to incorporate people with disabilities more into their work? LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Absolutely. Just like we talk about with mainstream organizations that put in every single grant application that they are going to increase their services to the Black community by 20%, and then they commence to putting together a plan that is made up by all white folks, and that plan misses a whole lot of obvious things that Black, Indigenous, and people of color could have told them that's not going to work, and it takes them several to figure out that they've gone wrong and they've spent a lot of money trying to arrive at the right decision, it's the same way with us. As we start to do this work, it's extremely important that we incorporate folks with disabilities in on the planning from the ground floor. Because as people who are able-bodied and without disabilities, we're going to miss a lot of stuff. So we could do it ourselves and say we're going to do this, we're going to reach the margins and put together a plan, but I can guarantee you that you're going to spend money backing up that plan and redoing it if you don't include folks with disabilities on the ground floor and put them in positions of power in our agencies. Our agencies should look as diverse as we have been asking mainstream agencies to look, if that makes sense. ASHLEY BROMPTON: It does make sense. Thank you so much. We are getting very close to the end of our time together. There were quite a few more questions that I don't know that we're going to have time to get to. I do want to, again, point you all to Luana's email address. And hopefully someone on my team can put our cvs@vera.org email address into the chat. That's a great way to get your questions into CVS, and then we can get them to Luana, or we can hopefully start to help answer them ourselves. Again, that's cvs@vera.org. I apologize that we did not have time to get to all of the questions today. I think there was just a huge wealth of material that we wanted to get to and a lot of conversation happening. So thank you all so much for actively participating today. I would say this is one of our top five most active webinars we've ever had in the chat. It was constantly going, and you all were really critically thinking about some of these issues. We really want to continue talking about these intersections and these topics that matter to you, so I am going to ask you to please fill out our survey that we ask you to complete after the session. And Luana's putting it on the screen right now. There's a link to a brief survey. It's really, really helpful to us to have the survey there. It gives us an opportunity to see what went well with this webinar, what you didn't like, what you wish would have been different as we move forward. It will also pop up on your screen when you close the webinar. So don't worry. I know you can't click it. Unfortunately, you can't click it. But you can definitely fill out the survey when you close out the webinar today. And we will post one more time the materials in the chat. So if you need a record of attendance or you want a copy of the PowerPoint, which includes the statistics and any links, we will make sure that that's posted one more time in the chat so that folks have access to that as well. And again, I want to thank Luana today for the amazing information that you provided. It was really helpful and eye opening for me personally and I know for a lot of the people who are here listening today. And thank you so much to our access team who has done so much on today's webinar, our interpreters and our captionists, and the people working behind the scenes to make this happen for all of you today. We appreciate all of you as well for taking the time to come have a real, authentic conversation with us. And we hope to continue to have these conversations with you. So please feel free to reach out and continue this process with us. And with that, the links to the materials will be sent out via email as well in a follow-up. So if you don't have a chance to click on that today, you'll see that in the next couple of days. And you should see a recording on our website in the next couple of weeks. Thank you all so much, and have a great afternoon. LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Thank you. Bye bye.