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French interpreters let me know when you are all back on. Katie. SPEAKER 1: Ashley it says OK, all set with Margaret. ASHLEY: OK. All right, here we go. I'm going to resume the video. Thank you all so much for your patience and understanding while we try to make sure that we have complete access for everyone. SPEAKER 1: Main function for all questions, not the chat. If you don't want to lose a question or comment during the presentation, please feel free to go ahead and enter it in the Q&A pod. We will hold your questions until the end. You can also upvote another question by clicking the thumbs up symbol below the question. This will prioritize-- SPEAKER 2: Margaret, can you hear me? Can you please speak to the interpreter. SPEAKER 1: We can still access the questions and respond to them. One note about the chat pod, you cannot save the chat, nor will you be able to copy and paste any messages that are shared from it. This is a security measure. 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If you want to watch this video again, you can find it on our website at www.endabusepwd.org. For any other questions, please contact cvs@vera.org. KATIE: Interpreters on the French line, this is Katie. ASHLEY: Katie, this is Ashley we can all hear you. Katie: Sorry, this is Katie. We're having an issue with the interpretation on one of our channels. And we just need one minute to pause and we'll let you know in just a moment. ASHLEY: OK. Thank you so much. OK. It looks like we are all set. We apologize so much for the delay today. As many of you know, we try to create an inclusive space in our virtual trainings and webinars. And so sometimes that comes with some glitches that we have to work out and we appreciate all of you and your patience while we were figuring everything out. Welcome to today's End Abuse of People with Disabilities webinar series. My name is Ashley Brompton, and I am a program associate at the Center on Victimization and Safety. It is so great to be joined by so many of you today. And today I wanted to provide you a few short reminders just in case you were able to watch the video at the beginning, and we also recognize that Zoom makes regular changes to the technology and we want to make sure that everyone is aware of the ways in which they can access different features of Zoom. First the captions. If you would like to view the captions, please select the closed caption icon which is at the bottom of your Zoom screen. You can select the arrow next to that closed caption icon. From the list of menus you can select Show Subtitles, the captions will appear at the bottom of your screen. If you would like, you can also select transcript view. If you select transcript view, the captions will show up on the right hand side of your screen. Please note that if you use transcript view, your ability to see the chat box may be impacted. So we do recommend if possible using the subtitles, and otherwise you can, of course, also use the transcript view. The second is viewing the American Sign Language interpreters. If you are in speaker view right now, you may only be seeing the American Sign Language interpreter. You may also be seeing a little bit of like a space holder for the other American Sign Language interpreter but you won't see our panelists. If you would like to see our panelists and the interpreters, you can go up to the right hand corner of your screen and there will be a button that says View. You can click that button that says View and click speaker or click gallery, I'm sorry, you'll click gallery. And when you click gallery you should be able to see me and the interpreter right now and our panelists in just a moment. That is an opportunity to be able to see everyone whose video is turned on for the session at the same time. If you're struggling to see the interpreters or if you have other questions or concerns, please let us know in the chat or the question and answer box. We are happy to help you with any challenges you might be facing. We will be doing interpreters switches every 20 minutes in this session. And so at that time we will actually pause the discussion to allow the three sets of interpreters that we have with us today switch at that time. So you will notice that throughout the session. The other thing to note is we do have a multilingual space today. So we have an English presentation with American Sign Language interpreting which you will see on your screen. And then we also have two spoken language lines, a Spanish spoken language interpretation line and a French spoken language interpretation line. So we do all of their switches at the same time, which is why we do sort of a hard pause for that. And with that, I wanted to provide a little bit of context as to what we are going to do together today and what we're hoping to accomplish today. This session might look a little bit different than some past sessions you may have attended from the Center on Victimization and safety. There is no PowerPoint. It is a little less formal, a little bit more conversational. We are doing that because we feel like it provides a better opportunity to interact with the panelists and provides a better opportunity for them to interact with each other and have conversation, and really talk about the important aspects of the work that we are doing together. So you might notice that moving forward in some of our other sessions as well. So I just wanted to make note of that for all of you today. Today we are going to have a conversation on serving survivors with disabilities. I am very excited to be able to facilitate that conversation and to have two great panelists here with us today. The first panelist is Renee Lopez. She is an advocate who was born and raised in Texas. She has been advocating on behalf of herself and other people with disabilities for decades now. She is a member of Adapt of Texas, A-D-A-P-T, Adapt of Texas, which is a grassroots organization that advocates for rights of people with disabilities. She's also a member of the advisory board for safe disability services also based in Austin, Texas, and does a lot of work in her community and other disability organizations, including Accessible Housing Austin. So we're really excited to have Renee here to participate in the conversation. Our other panelists today will be Sandra Harrell who just turned her camera on. Perfect timing Sandra. And Sandra works at the Center on Victimization and Safety. She is the Associate Center Director at the Center on Victimization and Safety, and has been working at the intersection of domestic violence and sexual assault for a very long time. And so we are excited to have these two experts with us today. Welcome to both of you. RENNE: Hello. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. SANDRA: Hi, I'm happy to be here as well. Thank you Hi Renee, good to see you. RENNE: Hi. It's been a while. ASHLEY: So before we get started today, I wanted to give you both an opportunity to introduce yourselves. Anything that you would like to add before we jump right in to the conversation? We'll start with Renee. RENNE: Yeah. I just want to say that I am glad to be here, and I look forward to hopefully providing people with some resources and information that will help with this topic that we're on. And as Ashley said, I'm from Austin, Texas. And most of you probably we just went through this horrible snowstorm, and it was quite traumatic. But I'm here, so I'm ready to get started. ASHLEY: Great, welcome, Renee. SANDRA: Hi. I'm Sandra Harrell. And what we did not have the terrible troubles that Texas had during the snowstorm, we also were in Nashville, Tennessee just had ice and snow. And it was an incredible week last week, and a week where I was not able to get dog food, so I placed a chilly order that just arrived. And I'm now going to be kind of a jerk, so I apologize for that inconvenience. ASHLEY: That's OK, we will make do with your dog. So we are just going to jump right into the conversation. We have a lot to talk about today. And I do want to encourage all of you at the outset if you have questions for Renee and Sandra or things that you would like to elevate in the conversation, feel free to let us know. We do ask that if you have a question for the panelists or for myself that you put that in the question and answer pod. As you might notice, the chat pod scrolls a lot as people are adding things to the conversation which we love to see. But it does mean that there is a risk we could lose your question if you posted in the chat. If you post it in the Q&A, we know that we won't lose it and we will be able to answer it as soon as possible. Before we get started with the first question, it seems early but it's been 20 minutes. So we are going to do a quick interpreter switch. So we are just going to pause momentarily. OK. Great Thank you all so much for your patience while we are doing our interpreter switches. So I want to get started with just asking you a little bit about what the research shows about violence in the lives of people with disabilities. Kind of set the stage for us, what does the experience of people with disabilities who experience domestic and sexual violence look like starting with statistics and then maybe just some of the experiences that you all know about? SANDRA: Hi. This is Sandra. I can get started with the statistics side of things, Renee, if that's OK with you. RENNE: Yeah. SANDRA: Just as a brief aside, the research available to us about violence in the lives of people with disabilities is incredibly limited. So I always like to give that caveat because there's a lot that we don't know about violence in the lives of people with disabilities. And what we do know is kind of complicated and flawed in nature based on how the research has gone. But what we do know is that in every credible study, people with disabilities are three times more likely to experience violent victimization in their lifetime than people without disabilities. We know that there's a higher number or a higher rate of victimization among people with certain types of disability. So people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, some studies have shown that they are up to 10 times more likely to experience violence in their lifetimes. When we have these conversations we often say people with intellectual or developmental disabilities in their life it's probable that they'll experience sexual violence in their lifetime because the rate of sexual violence is just so incredibly high in the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. So within a variety of communities, people with mental illness, there's a very high rate of violence and victimization. Of all the victimization that we see anecdotally, meaning all the people with disabilities that we have worked with over the years or heard from over the years, the type of violence that their experience is often sexual violence. And so it's something to pay particular attention to that even when we see like personal care abuse, not caregiver abuse, the form of violence that is taking on is sexual violence. So that's just something in this arena to pay attention to. I don't know Renee, what would you add there? RENNE: Well, I would add that I think so much of it goes unreported. And when I hear the statistics, I'm taken aback that it's so high but I think it's actually higher because in the community that I live in and having grown up with a disability, I know that there's a lot that goes on that people are afraid to report or can't report or don't know how to report. So I really think it's higher than what the statistics show. Like you said it's probably flawed, but it still shows that it's really high. And I meant to give a brief description of myself at the beginning and I forgot. But I have a physical disability that I've had since birth. And so I grew up with this disability. And I'm 59 years old. And I can't believe I'm that old. I don't know what happened. I have gray hair thanks to COVID and not being able to color my hair. I am wearing a black headband and a red shirt, and the background behind me is that of my bedroom because my computer's in my room. So anyway, getting that out of the way, that's the description. And also wanted to say that I worked for 30 years for the state of Texas. And I retired in 2014 and I also got my master's in education from the University of Texas at Austin. But most of my life has been in the disability community. So I want to say that it's-- I see a lot that goes on in the community that I've always been aware of but had no idea how to get assistance. And even though I am with safe disability services, at the time that I saw some abuse going on, including my own experience I didn't know that there were resources out there. And I've since come to learn that and so I'm part of the webinar with Vera in other places in the hopes of getting this information out not only to service providers but to people with disabilities as well. ASHLEY: Thank you so much to both of you. I think you've highlighted a lot of really important information as far as just where there are gaps in what we know, and the differences between the lived experience that people have versus what research tells us and what we actually can empirically say for certain. I do want to talk about a little bit briefly about how violence manifests in the lives of people with disabilities. I know Sandra you talked a little bit about sexual violence, but are there other differences or maybe ways in which violence might look different in the lives of people with disabilities versus people without disabilities? SANDRA: Sure. The barking dog and cheery delivery also distracted me Renee and I forgot to describe myself. So let me add real quickly. So I have Brown hair thanks to COVID with some grays coming in. And I'm wearing dark glasses, and I'm wearing a white shirt with black stripes. And behind me is just a credenza and a chair with some alphabet letters on it. So that's sort of what I look like, and I'm a white woman. And I'm looking very white these days because I've been inside for a long, long time. So yeah. So when we think about sort of the incidents of violence in the lives of people with disabilities as I mentioned, at this particular intersection what we often see is sexual violence. But there are particular ways for those of you who've been in the domestic and sexual violence world for a while you know about how people who abuse will use tactics of power and control in order to maintain power and control over the person that they are abusing. For people with disabilities, those who are targeting them for abuse may use a variety of power and control tactics that are very specific to exploiting the fact that the person has a disability. So for instance, you will see that somebody who has maybe a psychiatric disability or who relies on a regular daily dosage of medication of any type, the abuser may over or under medicate that person so that the person is not-- like that the medication just isn't necessarily working the way that it is supposed to. And how that plays out particularly for people with psychiatric disabilities that they're relying on medication to really help them manage the psychiatric disability. The abuser will overmedicate them or under medicate them. And then when they have symptoms related to their psychiatric disability, the abuser will be like see they're just crazy, this person is nuts. And so it's a way to sort of discredit the victim in this situation because they may not present as a good victim when the police arrive because they have been under or overmedicated. Or another thing that we hear a lot about is just withholding auxiliary aids or putting them right out of their reach. I worked with a woman many years ago whose abuser would put her wheelchair just within her reach and then leave the house for the day. But she was not able to get to the wheelchair and it was just a way to demonstrate to her how much power he had. Renee, when you and I were talking just the other day, you talked about how that could be used as a sort of a way to punish the victim for speaking out of turn or saying something that the abuser doesn't like. And then that's just a demonstration of like you have to do things my way or I will make you pay for this. And so that's another example of that. One thing that, and Renee I would love for you to speak more to this after I sort of highlighted it. But within the disability community, our society in general has created so many barriers for people with disabilities to be able to participate in society. That the ability to be in connection with people is incredibly an important value, Renee. Like it's just being able to be with people and to not be isolated is so important. And of course, one way to abuse someone or to punish someone or to establish power and control over someone is to take that connection to other people in community away. Do you want to speak a little bit more about that Renee? RENNE: Things have gotten better first I'll say in today's society, buses are more accessible and buildings are more accessible thanks to the ADA, but we still have a long way to go. But there's still a lot of isolation. And I think that the more a person is isolated, the more you become a victim. And when the only person that you're in contact with happens to be your abuser, you're not going to do anything to upset that person because they might not come back, or they might not bring your dinner, or they you don't know what might happen. And so you end up withholding and becoming depressed and even more isolated, and you don't know who to reach out to. I was thinking when you were talking about the Power and Control Wheel, I've depended my whole life on people taking care of me because I need assistance with my ADLs, activities of daily living. I need assistance with getting out of bed, taking the shower, getting dressed. And when I was younger, I was afraid of attendance because I thought that if I were-- if I got upset or yelled at him or even if I was in a bad mood, which everybody is once in a while when you get up on the wrong side of the bed, that person could take it wrong and think that you're being abusive to them or that you're not. Maybe you're just in a bad mood, but it goes back and forth like that. But in my case, I was always cheerful. I never let my feelings show. I was always happy, I was always nice, I was the super nice girl because I was afraid of attendance and what they might do to me. And one experience I did have Sandra. I think I told you this the other day is I did have an attendant who was giving me a shower and we were arguing about something. And she left me in the shower for like almost 30 minutes. I got water logged as sort of a lesson to get back at me for the argument. And I was very young at the time, maybe 20, and that's when I learned that they have the power and I had to be submissive. And I did go up with ableism and I learned to be compliant, and to be quiet, and to be submissive because the way my parents told me you're going to depend on these people, so you better be really nice to them. And I think that leads to putting yourself in a position of being abused because then that person, even if they don't set out to want to abuse you, there is this sense of power and control. This person can't do something unless I do it for them. And before you know it, you're in a power and control situation. SANDRA: I think that gives a real insight to Renee and sort of how the way that we have these narratives that we see people with disabilities in our society about what your parents will really well meaningfully said, which was be nice to these folks because you're going to be depending on them. It does teach sort of a culture of compliance, a culture of OK, I've got to do what people without disabilities tell me to do because again, societally they're the ones that have the power. They're the ones who to determine my value, my work, and what resources I get, which is another way that abusers will use power and control is to say, OK Yeah, maybe transportation is more accessible, but we're not going to let you have access to that accessible transportation. We're not going to make sure that you are connected to the resources that you need, like a day program for just getting out or for getting connected to the internet or other sort of resources. RENNE: Exactly. One thing I want to say Sandra is that the example of when I said public transportation, especially here in Austin, Texas, all the buses are totally accessible. There's no one bus in this entire city that a person in a wheelchair cannot get on. But here's the problem. It becomes attitudinal because the person, the bus driver doesn't like taking the time to have to stop the bus, lower the lift, let you get on and tie down your chair. And many times their attitudes are really, really bad and they make you feel bad for getting on the bus and taking up their time. And so even though there is accessibility, you do often have to deal with the attitude of people still in those service providers because they do see people with disabilities as Oh God, they're going to take up more of my time, I'm going to have to take time to understand them, I'm going to have t-- and they're going to require more for me than I can give. And so it becomes an attitudinal problem as well. SANDRA: I think that's so important that you bring up Renee because I think that exact attitudinal sort of barrier shows not only on buses lines, it's in other probes of programming that a person with a disability may be accessing where you may not even need to show people that you're feeling impatient that way or that you've got a very booked schedule. But it comes across your face. And all of a sudden that individual with the disability who has already taken a tremendous amount of effort just to get there because of the barriers that we have erupted in society sees like that you're perturbed, that you're impatient, that you don't feel like doing that. And we'll get to barriers and surface later. But I think that was a great setup for that particular conversation that there's that attitudinal-- that your internal reaction will show up like folks are going to see your internal reaction. ASHLEY: So with that, I did want to go back to something Renee that you mentioned, which is ableism. And we talk a lot about attitudinal barriers and you mentioned ableism. And I was wondering if you all could define ableism and talk a little bit more about how ableism might be related to violence against people with disabilities and might create barriers for them in receiving services. SANDRA: Should we pause for an interpreter switch first? ASHLEY: That would be great. Let's pause for an interpreter switch, and then I will try to remember my question and repeat it. OK. It looks like we're good to go. So just to recap, I was asking a little bit more about ableism and the ways in which it might create barriers. I know you all have already sort of talked about some of the barriers that might be created, but also specifically in victim services ways in which it might show up there. So I think our audience would be interested in hearing a definition and then maybe some insight into that. SANDRA: And Renee, I think you said that you found a great quote that you wanted to share. RENNE: Yeah I did. It's a quote I found from someone else with a disability who posted it on Facebook. And I liked it so much that I put it on my Facebook page. And when I knew about this webinar we were going to talk about ableism, I thought I would read it out to you guys. Ableism is a noun, a system that places value on people's bodies and minds based on societally. So excuse me, society, society. Excuse me, constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, excellence, and productivity. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in anti blackness, eugenics, colonialism, and capitalism. This form of systemic oppression leads to people and society determining who's valuable and worthy based on the person's appearance and/or their ability to satisfactorily produce, excel, and even behave. I thought that was perfect. SANDRA: Now TL Lewis as someone who given the props to TL Lewis in the chat. Yeah. I think that is perfect. And I think the idea that there is a certain way to be human is based on very specific standards, able standards, racist standards, sexist standards. Like how we value things are based on these very particular standards. And to Ashley's point they do show up in services. Like you see how ableism has created a victim services industry that have not thought about people with disabilities at all in designing victim services. So you mentioned the Power and Control Wheel earlier. For those of you who aren't familiar with this in the domestic violence world, there's a tool that we all use regularly with survivors of domestic violence. And it's called the Power and Control Wheel. And it was designed in the '80s by a group of formerly battered women in Duluth, Minnesota. And they came around and they began just having like groups of talking circles to explain sort of what they were experiencing and visualizing sort of what that abuse looks like in the Power and Control Wheel. But that group of women didn't necessarily include people with disabilities, women with disabilities. And so you don't see the experiences of people with disabilities reflected in that power and control wheel. You certainly when we talk about who the-- when we talk about the abusers in the lives of survivors without disabilities, we're not talking about personal care attendant abuse, which is a huge body of the people who are harming people with disabilities. We're not talking about transportation providers as you mentioned earlier Renee like these. We're talking about intimate partners in the traditional sense, not the intimate partners that or the people who have intimate roles in the lives of people with disabilities. So that happens, and I think we were talking earlier just about how our prevention education programs, our healthy sexuality programs completely like sort of assume that people with disabilities don't need that type of information and don't reflect the lived experiences of people with disabilities. I think there was something else you wanted to share about the importance of sex education in the lives of people with disabilities Renee. RENNE: Well, first to what you were saying, I just want to say that there's this idea or belief out there that if a person is a caregiver that they're being good or there was a word for it and it has slipped my mind. But it's sort of like they're saints because they do this kind of work. And I think that's a misnomer because, and that's not to say all attendants are bad. I don't want to say that at all because many are very, very good. But when we are talking about abuse and caregivers are often the abusers whether they want to or not even if they don't mean to, they just know that they can control know. They believe that because they're able-bodied they have power over you whether they mean to or not. So I don't want to give the impression that caregivers are bad people, but they're not. But I think many times I know and I tell people about attendant care abuse or caregiver abuse, people find it hard to believe. And that really shocks me because they're like no, they're good people. You must be exaggerating or maybe you want things done your way but you can't do it. So you should let them do it their way. And so it becomes a real-- it's hard to explain to people about the power and control, and that kind of relationship. I was going somewhere with that and I can't remember, what was your question? SANDRA: Well no you were responding to just the talk about caregiver abuse, which I think is really important. And for a long time when we talked about or when our society responded to caregiver abuse, it was often to your point by resourcing the caregivers because the assumption was it was such a burden to care for and to provide this care, that that's the only reason that they were abusing the person that they were caring for, and there would be resources for the caregiver and not really looking into what the victim actually needed in that situation. But what you were going to speak to was the importance of sex education and healthy relationship education. RENNE: And I found another book. I'm going to stop here for a minute because I want to tell you something that happened during this winter storm that we had here in Texas. My attendant who lives with me had a panic attack and we had to call EMS. And the first thing that they said or talked about, and this happened just two days ago, was our son said, well, she's been under a lot of stress. You don't know hard it is to take care of someone with a disability. So she's been really under stress trying to take care of her. Well, this had nothing to do with me, it had to do with the storm. So that really upset me because it was easy and believable by the thought that she was experiencing the stress because of me but it really was because of the entire situation that we were in. So I just had to get that out because it's happening to me even today. SANDRA: Thank you. That's just infuriating. RENNE: Yeah. It was-- so I just wanted to get that out because it's still happening to me today. Getting back to sexual abuse, I read this is from an influencer on Twitter. I don't do Twitter often but she's also on Facebook. And she's called Wheelchair Rapunzel, and I really, really like her. And she wrote this. She said when it comes to sexual abuse, sex education for people with disabilities is severely lacking. Why? Because ableist views tells us that disabled people aren't sexual. Why is this harmful? It leads to more sexual assaults, trauma, and abuse for disabled people that goes unreported. And I think that says it all. And this woman is 21 years old. I'm 59, I've been saying this since I was 21 years old. But the fact that this young person knows it and says it shows that we still have a long way to go to take care of this problem. And another thing I wanted to mention Sandra was that I was watching the Today Show this morning. And they were talking about biases and how they changed over time. And biases have changed for racism and all other marginalized people but for people with disabilities and people who are obese, they have not changed at all. So when I heard that this morning, I wasn't planning on bringing it up, but when I heard it this morning I thought of course, that doesn't surprise me at all because the attitudes haven't changed. We think they have, but they really haven't. SANDRA: And we have a long way to go. I think we have a long way to go when it comes to addressing racism in our society. A lot of the isms in our society. I think your point about ableism is that we've only just started naming it, like it's only just started being something that we name. Even in intersectional spaces, we often see that people with disabilities and the needs of people with disabilities aren't necessarily centered at all. I'll go to incredibly progressive sort of meetings and find them to be completely inaccessible. So I think if that's a common occurrence is that like with ableism and inaccessibility is just it. And I think part of that is the way that we have successfully devalued people with disabilities in our society. And so to your point from earlier around capitalism, if we're valuing like people with disabilities less, then the cost of making things accessible for them just doesn't seem like a good cause because it's like well, the cost benefit analysis of all of this isn't necessarily in our favor. And so there are ramps that are added, doorways aren't widened, buildings, restrooms aren't made accessible so someone can actually use the restroom. You're not making sure that you're not putting up big fica trees in the middle of a hall and creating an unnecessary barrier. So there's just a ton of things that happen when you're not centering accessibility for people or centering even people with disabilities that you completely miss even when you're coming from the best intentioned place. RENNE: Exactly. SANDRA: I would just want to add to that I think a big barrier within victim services that is brought on by ablist attitudes is the assumption that people with disabilities can't do this work, that can't do, can't be a victim advocate. Can't say that you don't see people with disabilities working at victim services. And from your own experience, we can all say that that's not true. If you serve on the advisory committee of a major victim service provider in Austin, Texas. And so I think one of the important things for the takeaway is I hope for the audience is just that you should really make an effort to hire people with disabilities as volunteers, as staff, like making sure that you have people on your staff who have disabilities and represent populations that you want to serve. RENNE: Primarily what I have found in the places that I've volunteered at is that the people who are hired in these positions are primarily white female. And those of us with disabilities are not hired, we're on the advisory board. And so that's, you're very right about that. Yeah. SANDRA: Yeah. I do note that in the chat someone is pointing out that invisible disabilities can contribute to that narrative as well. I don't know if you want to expand upon that a little bit Heather in the chat, but I think that the fact that disability is such a huge category and we, a colleague and I were just having this conversation earlier today. It's like we have constructed disability as a monolith. And so we give sort of one idea of what disability can look like. But then it could be someone with an intellectual disability, it could be someone with a mental illness that you can't see that mental illness, that doesn't necessarily show up. It could be somebody who has a chronic health issue that you can't necessarily see. All right. And I think what we're hearing in the chat is just like we don't see people with disabilities in these positions but sometimes that means we don't see people with physical disabilities or obvious disabilities in these positions. RENNE: Well, that's very true. But because I'm in a wheelchair and I have a physical disability, I speak to that. So that's just what I was trying to get across is you rarely see someone with a physical disability, particularly a severe disability that everybody is aware of, you rarely see them in those positions. That's what I was trying to say, but not Yeah there are invisible disabilities for sure Yeah, absolutely. SANDRA: And there are people with invisible disabilities who are showing up for services as well who would benefit from seeing people. Like seeing like disability centric sort of attention being paid. Just because you can't see that disability doesn't mean it's not there and that you're not already serving. ASHLEY: And that Sandra, this is Ashley. A quick reminder from the interpreters which is impossible I know that you are talking and having a really great conversation. If possible. If you could just say this is Sandra, this is Renee, it helps out a lot in the conversation. Just a quick reminder on that. And then something Sandra that you just said brings me to be thinking more about outreach, which is how can organizations be signaling that they are thinking about people with disabilities and making them feel welcome to come in to receive services? Renee, you want to speak to that? RENNE: OK. She had mentioned your name, so I was going to let you answer that. I'm sorry actually, could you say that again, I thought you were talking to Sandra. Like how to make people with disabilities feel more welcome? ASHLEY: Yeah, this is Ashley. Yeah, how can organizations do outreach in a way that makes people with disabilities feel more welcome and included in their service provision? How can they make them feel like they're is attention being paid to access and feel more welcomed? RENNE: Yeah. I think that reaching out to organizations that involve people with disabilities is a great way to do this, providing pamphlets or information or even having a get together during a meeting to come in and speak to the group. For example with Adapt, I'm a member of Adaptive Texas, and we get speakers all the time. And they come in and tell us what's going on with, , what they have to offer what they are offering, what could they do to make it better. I think another way is to provide sort of an open house as well because I did a video for Safe where they film me going through the shelter and showing all the accessibility that they have. And that became something that they shared with the community. So the community knows now that they have an accessible shelter. And I think advisory committees are also a good idea. Many people with disabilities I think have great ideas about how to make your services more accessible. And of course, if you are hiring somebody, recruiting from colleges or universities or people who are graduating that have a disability that may not even know that they could apply at your place and that what you're looking for I think is a good idea as well. SANDRA: I think that's an import-- this is Sandra. I think that's such an important point Renee. Like really if you're wanting to hire people with disabilities, making sure that your job announcements are clear about that and are clear about reasonable accommodations available upon request. Just like putting that front and center, and I think the same is true about putting front and center in your outreach that you welcome people with disabilities, finding ways to signal to the disability community like that just by even having images of individuals with disabilities in the materials that you're putting out there. What were you going to say Renee? RENNE: Well,I was going to say that-- but one thing that I want to caution people is don't want to hire somebody just to be a token. You don't want to say here we have a person with a disability and then give them very minimum amount of work because you don't want over to them up because. And I think I know that in the past there's been affirmative action where people get hired to fill a quota and, but they don't really expect you to do the job or you're just there to show that they're being affirmative and they're hiring somebody with a disability. And that has happened to me before in other jobs that I've applied where they're like, look, we hired this severely disabled person and then I wouldn't have anything to do. And so that was more insulting to me than that if they just didn't hire me. So I mean, yes hire people with disabilities. There are a lot of people with disabilities graduating from college who would be very capable of doing the job. But don't just do it and then put them in a position where they don't have power. You have once again the power control wheel in a different way. SANDRA: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's again ableism, this is Sandra, creeping into the attitudes of assuming that a person with a disability is not going to be able to do a good job. I think it's sort of, I think it's called the bias of low expectations or the or the bigotry, I think of low expectations. I've heard it said several different ways, but it's setting really low expectations for people with disabilities instead of holding everybody to the same sort of double standards of performance. So actually I know that Renee and I have covered some ground here. Is there anything in particular you wanted us to make sure that we were speaking to, and do we want to pause for an interpreter break? ASHLEY: This is Ashley. Let's pause for an interpreter break really quickly. OK. It looks like we are ready. We're getting a lot of questions coming through and something I wanted to talk to you all about is OK. So we know that we need to signal that we are providing accommodations, be welcoming to people with disabilities. What does that look like in practice? How can we actually make changes to our organization to make it more accessible? What are some tips and strategies that you might have around that? SANDRA: Renne, do you want me to take that one? RENNE: Yes, please. SANDRA: OK. So this is Sandra. I think that one of the key strategies that victim services organizations can take is to be very sort of proactive about identifying what access barriers are located within their services. So you can conduct an access review of your program. Renee made the great point of like bring-- like this is a great opportunity to begin building relationships with the disability community and inviting them in to help you look at the accessibility and identify the accessibility concerns within your built environment. And I think it's important also to think about other elements of your environment like your communication environment, and I know there's a lot of chatter in the chat right now about communication access for the deaf community. And Ashley just posted that we are actually hosting another of these panels specific to the deaf community. So I won't spend a lot of time about communication access for deaf survivors because we're going to, we have a whole webinar dedicated to that. But there's other elements of your communication environment that need to be made accessible, making sure that your intake forms are in plain language, making sure that you are slowing things down so that people with cognitive disabilities or intellectual disabilities really have are able to process all of the information that you're providing to them. Creating enough time during intake or during your advocacy sessions with that person to give them the time that they may need, and doing it in the spirit of patience. So Rene's earlier point know like looking perturbed when you're saying sure I can extend this by a half hour is not going to create a welcoming space. So I think just building flexibility into every single thing that you do. And then one of the things that when I worked in a shelter in Louisiana many years ago, we would often do new things just to sort of spruce the place up, making sure that why you're doing that to make it feel more homey, to make it feel more welcoming to everyone, that you're not accidentally creating access barriers. And so we really recommend Ashley to answer your questions shortly versus in the long form. We recommend just doing regular access reviews. A lot of people look at this is like one and done. You do an access review and you're finished with it but we really suggest doing it on at least an annual basis because sometimes new decor will create an access barrier that wasn't there before. RENNE: And Sandra, one thing I want to bring up that I think would be I would really like to see this happen is for to do a check in or some training on what biases, and prejudices, and ableism workers may have themselves. It's going to take a lot of stuff honestly. But I think if you take time to take a look like what do you think about people with disabilities? You think they-- and just find out where they're at so that everybody can get on the same page. And then when a person with a disability shows up you don't have somebody freaking out like Oh my God, I'm not going to do with this. I'm going to do with her, what do I get? And it's just because I've seen that too and I've experienced that. I'll go in in my electric wheelchair and all a sudden it's like Oh my God, there's a textbook that we get her in there? And also some of us have a ballistic attitudes and we may think we don't but we do. And I have my own because I was brought up the same way everybody else was in the same society. And I had to learn that I had of myself. And so I think it's good to if you would take the time to just do some training, I think it's probably what was once called sensitivity training. But we could call it something else now but the ability for people to really take a look at their own biases and maybe come from there and find better ways so that they don't get in the way of dealing with people who have disabilities. SANDRA: Absolutely, and this is Sandra. And I think that that would be an opportunity to do some self reflection within an organization around a variety of biases that they may hold. So ablelist biases around race, like there's so much that we growing up we internalize, and messages that we internalize. And if you aren't actively trying to understand what messages you carry around in your body about other people, they're going to come out like you said, and they're going to come out in ways that are harmful to people that you're wanting to serve. And that I know in the victim services world is the last thing we want to do is do more harm, but it is what is happening when we're not examining on a regular basis like what biases do we hold and how are those coming out in the services that we run? RENNE: One thing I noticed when I was on the advisory committee with a safe disability services I was asked to be a part of writing the curriculum for healthy relationships and sexuality. And we went out to schools to transitional students to teach this material and kind of get an idea of what works and what doesn't. And what I realized about myself coming from the world of disability was that I had my own biases about people with autism and people with intellectual disabilities. And I found myself wanting to talk to them and like baby talk or down it. So don't you don't want to do-- and I found myself doing that and I was like, what am I doing? And I had to examine my own bias and prejudices against people with intellectual disabilities because I was not familiar with it. And it's OK. I came to realize that and I had to work through that and realize that you talk to people as they're people regardless of what the disability or conditions or whatever color they are. You have to keep in mind first and foremost that that is a human being you're talking to and they deserve the respect that you have for them. SANDRA: And I think that, again, this is Sandra. I think that that's just such an important point is like everyone learns that ableism, the racism, the sexism that we-- all like there everyone is learning this along the way, and everyone is impacted differently about that. But it's something that we all have to unlearn if we want to do better. And I think that the 443 participants on here who clearly want to do better in that particular realm. I also want to echo Renee. Like I just always appreciate being in conversation with you because you bring these very personal stories to the conversation that are so impactful to me. So I just want to Thank you for opening up in that way. It's always wonderful to be in conversation with you. RENNE: Well, one of the things I want to say about being on these webinars with you guys is that I appreciate that you invite me to be a part of this because I am a person with a disability, I've lived it. I've lived through all everything you're talking about. So you're not just providing statistics and here's how you can take care of things, 1,2, 3, a,b,c, or a,b,c, 1,2,3. And it's about real life. And so I'm happy to share my life with all you people that are out there in the audience today because I do this because I think it's important for everyone to know that we want-- I think we all are here because we want a better society. We want to serve people more equally, we want to be better, and that's why I'm here and I'm sure that's why most of the participants are here as well. SANDRA: And I think the thing that you said the other day Renee when we were talking and when we were just talking about the statistics and you kind of interrupted that and said, you know what, the statistics are the statistics. They are what they are we know what is happening. We know what's happening, what are we going to do about it? And I think the goal for raising the issue is not just to talk about all the different statistics out there and paint the picture of how it all looks. But that there are real things that people can do about those, like the staff training that you talked about, partnering with disability organization, creating materials in plain language. Like there are concrete things that you can do to be more accessible to people with disabilities. And then the more accessible that you are, the more you can learn from people with disabilities about better ways to provide the services. So I think-- I think it's just really important to take the steps that are necessary to actually make the changes that can be made oftentimes for a little money. ASHLEY: This is Ashley. Thank you all so much. This has been a really engaging conversation as far. I just am a little bit fascinated sitting here listening to the two of you have this conversation. I do want to elevate a few things that I noticed coming through the chat that I thought were really important points to make. One of which is someone mentioned that we also need to really focus on not thinking about one size fits all accommodation. So everyone who has x type of disability needs y type of accommodation. I don't know if either of you want to add to that or expand upon why that is a problem that happens so often in organizations. RENNE: What I have found is that as long as you have the basics I think you're OK. I mean, if I go to your place and you have a ramp that I can get into, and the door I can go through, and a bathroom I can use, and a water fountain I can get to as far as physical disability. I'm not speaking for everybody. Then you've got the basics covered. And I've learned to be proactive though in saying if you want me to fill out this paperwork I'm going to need a table to write on because sometimes they just give you a clipboard and that's not going to work for me. Or if I need to make a phone call, I'll say, well, I need the phone to be lower or I need somebody to dial it for me, or something like that. I've learnt to ask for what I need. And so I think the thing is just really that you may run into people who don't know that they can ask for what they need. And you may not be able to provide exactly what they need, but you can also say well, let's work together to see how we can accommodate you. That gives that person a way to say I'm willing to work with you on solving this problem, we can work together. And that's really all I would ask for when I go anywhere. So let's work together. Don't assume anything, don't act like asking me a question is going to make me feel bad. I think I already know that I have a disability and I think I already know that I'm limited. So you don't have to feel bad about to bring it up a limitation because I think I already know that, and I'm willing to talk it over with you so we can make the proper adjustments. But it's yeah, I think just being open to working with that person and just I think if you take care of the basic, the foundation, the groundwork, I think that's probably the most I would expect. And if I need anything personally then I usually ask. SANDRA: I think that's exactly it. And Renee like we always recommend that you like work to create as much access proactively as possible, so people can get through the door and then prepared to respond to individual requests and listen to people what they say they need. I've seen so often. I remember traveling with a colleague who use a wheelchair. And we were checking into a hotel and she said I need a rolling shower and they're like, no we only have tab rooms. That's all we have. She needed a rolling shower, she couldn't use a tab room. And there's this dismissiveness that happens. It's just like well, this is what we got. But I think there's lots of ways to again have a conversation with the person to figure out this person Renee has been navigating this world for did you say 59 years. And 59 years I think what you need and how you can [INAUDIBLE]. So we'll be talking about that. ASHLEY: This is Ashley. I want to pause for one more final interpreter switch before we move on. OK. It looks like we are ready. I do want to elevate that Elise Brown, one of our colleagues at CBS did post a link to a really great tool kit about asking about accommodations for victim service providers. It is in the chat. I will also put the link in the participant materials folder that we send you the link for so that you can access the link. I'll put it in a Word document and then you can just open the Word document and click on the link. I think it's a really great resource for more context and information about how to talk to people specifically in victim services about what they might need to engage with services. And with that, we've gotten tons of questions from the audience over the past hour and 15 minutes. I want to touch on a few of them because I think that there are a few that are in a similar vein, one of which is what resources exist to help us figure out what accessibility looks like for our organization and how we can better resource ourselves? So what are some tools that exist. And Sandra, I'm going to ask you that question because I think you have a whole list of tools you can give people. SANDRA: Thanks Ashley. My dog has been quiet ever since chewier arrived, but he's just about to bark again. But I will hopefully get through this before he starts that mess. Well, over the last 16 years, I think there's been a growing body of promising practices that have been emerging at the intersection of domestic sexual violence and disability. And we've really tried to collect all of those on our interviews with people with disabilities.org website. So if you go to that website and go to the get connected page, you'll be able to find sample safety and access review tools, programatic resources. I did see that there was a question about is there a disability specific power and control wheel? We actually had a community and the collaboration was called Project Peer and they worked out of Washington DC. And they created a pictorial power and control wheel so that there's much less writing and more images to represent the different ways that power and control is used against people with disabilities. So you can find that there. We have pictorial guides to the sexual assault forensic exam, pictorial guides to the courtroom and legal advocacy. Just there are important policies and procedures that should be in place, like you should be very clear about your policy and procedure around working with somebody who has a guardian. I think guardianship is a very problematic part of the public policy for people with disabilities, and that our system has decided that if somebody with a disability needs support, then you can replace their decision making power with somebody else's decision making power, and that can really create barriers to services. But you as a service provider can actually address that in your policies. You can do policies and procedures around mandatory reporting, around having service animals, around having personal care attendants come into services with people about eligibility for services. If you don't currently and clearly articulate that people who are experiencing violence by a personal care attendant or that you're welcoming of people with disabilities in your eligibility policy, you're missing an opportunity to signal your commitment. I'm sorry, that was a long winded answer there. Ashley and Renee, do you have anything that you would add to that as far as sort of resources? RENNE: There are also resources within your community. I would look for them like Adapt or another organization. They all have acronyms, but there's here and there's like SILC which is the State Independent Living Center. There's Adapt, there's the Integral Health Care. And all these places also have information and resources that could be probably particular to your community which that's what I would do. I would check to see what's going on in my community where I can get those resources for the people that I can work with here in my community. So that's what I would recommend too. SANDRA: Absolutely. And Ashley just popped into the chat that protection and Advocacy agencies. Many of them have now adopted the name of your disability rights. So you might have disability rights Tennessee, or disability rights Wisconsin, or disability rights Washington. But those are your protection and advocacy agencies which have a lot of resources for helping folks. And then there's also another comment about independent living resources in your community. I would really work hard to connect to any living center that may be in your community and build a real authentic relationship with these disability organizations. Don't go to them just to take, work to really build a relationship with these agencies so that it's a give and take, that you're offering as well as asking every once in a while. ASHLEY: This is Ashley. One question that we didn't get to earlier but I wanted to make sure we had time to touch on and so now that we are coming to the end of the session I'm hoping that we can go back to it is really how, and we've talked a little bit about this throughout today's session the ways in which racism, ableism, sexism, economic status, , classism how all of those sort of intersect for survivors with disabilities. And I was just wondering if you all could talk a little bit about the ways that they might intersect to create additional barriers for people with disabilities. RENNE: Well, because I am Hispanic, I'm a Mexican-American origin and my grandparents were from Mexico. My parents themselves were born in the United States and grew up, went to school and knew English. But I still grew up in a community of predominantly Mexican people in the Barrio, I guess you would call it, and I was also involved in the Catholic church which was about 99% Mexican. And I was telling Sandra and Ashley the other day that the reason we had trouble getting assistance was because my grandparents were terrified of people in social service positions. They had language barriers, they didn't know how to explain their needs were, they didn't even know that you could even ask. And they were also afraid of being looked down on and being dismissed because of who we were. We were poor Hispanic people within the group. This is a child with a disability and she's going to need help, but how do we get it. And what exactly kind of help does she need? And luckily, I was very, very lucky in that my parents spoke English and they had high school education. And they were able to communicate with doctors and all the people that helped me throughout my life. But I remember my grandparents being afraid like Oh no, don't because they were just, they had a fear. And back then social services was more about sending you back to Mexico, or taking your child away, or causing some kind of problem. And then there was also the issue of money. We couldn't afford to get the help that I needed and to find resources. And then also brought up with a lot of old country biases. When I was born I was told I was a punishment for my parents because they eloped. And so when I was born I was their first born. It was like see God's punishing you. And so I had to grow up with that kind of attitude as well. And so I think when you have someone who's a person of color and when you have a person with a different ethnic background, especially here in Texas where there's mostly Hispanics out here, you have to consider the culture and what beliefs come with that culture, and also the fear they may have because the last few years has been one of sending people back to their country and others are being separated from your parents. And there's a great fear of people from marginalized communities wanting to get help. And so I think we have to be aware that that is in the back of people's minds as well. Are you really going to help me or you say you're going to help me but you're really going to hurt me? And so there has to be trust built into the system as well. SANDRA: This is Sandra, I have nothing to add to that, very well said Renee. RENNE: Thank you. ASHLEY: This has been great. Unfortunately we did not get to everything that we wanted to cover today. We just had so much information that we wanted to cover. Hopefully we can invite our panelists and some other folks to come back and continue this conversation. Again, this is a starting point for this conversation. We hope to continue to have these types of discussions with various experts and people with lived experience at this intersection over the next part of our series. So we do hope that you all will continue to come to our sessions and engage with these folks who have such a wealth of expertise in lived experience that it is just unbelievable. And we are so fortunate that they were able to spend some time with us today. I do want to recognize that there were a lot of questions in the Q&A and the chat that we did not get to today. I am recording all of those questions. I will follow up with folks directly with anything that we did not get to. I also want to recognize a lot of you are asking specific questions related to your organization or you want to connect us for more information. Please feel free to email us at any time at cvs@vera.org Hopefully one of my colleagues will be kind enough to tape that in the chat for me. Again, any questions that you might have at this intersection or if you would like to connect more with the panelists today, feel free to do so. I will be compiling all of the links from today's session into a Word document that then you can just open in our materials and click on to access the various resources that we talked about. You should be getting a follow up email tomorrow with all of that information. Also included in the webinar materials is a guide that is really more of just a tip sheet with the main points that we talked about today and some other things that we didn't get to that will be helpful for you in navigating this topic moving forward. If you are looking for a record of attendance, you can do so by clicking into again that webinar materials link. I'm going to copy it one last time and paste it in the chat. And that way you can find your record of attendance in there and download it directly or you can reach out to us at cvs@vera.org Thank you again today to our panelists and our amazing interpreters and captionists who worked through some technical difficulties today to make it happen. We appreciate all of you as well for spending some time with us today, and we look forward to seeing you soon. SANDRA: Thank you. Bye Renee. RENNE: Bye. Thank you so much.