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These videos and discussion guides are intended to be used by domestic and sexual violence advocates and activists to spark conversations on the ways that racism and oppression have shaped our anti-violence movements and how we can dismantle racism in our organizations and communities. In these videos, you will hear from advocates and organizers who discuss their own experiences, perceptions, and journeys of practicing anti-racism as a means of ending gender-based and intimate violence. We invite you to view these videos with an open heart, on your own or with others.

For White people watching these videos, it is beneficial and important to sit with any feelings of discomfort, listen to feelings, stories, and perspectives of people of color, and move towards repair, action, and accountability.

Voices from Our Movement: a 3-part video series on ending racism and oppression as the heart of our anti-violence movement

Video 1: Connecting the Dots: Racism, Oppression, and Work to End Domestic, Sexual, and Intimate Violence Spanish language version coming soon!

Video 2: Racism in the Anti-Violence Movement: Impacts on Survivors, Advocates, and Communities Spanish language version coming soon!

Video 3: Transformation is Now: Toward an Integrated, Intersectional Movement Spanish language version coming soon!

If you have feedback about your experience using this set of resources or suggestions on how they can be improved, please share your thoughts with us! For questions about these videos and accompanying materials please contact Kate Vander Tuig at kvandertuig@futureswithoutviolence.org.

Resources

The following list is a limited collection of resources to support your anti-racism/oppression work and goals for liberation suggested by the developers and participants of these videos that closely match the themes discussed. For an expansive list of tools and resources visit racialequitytools.org .

Understanding racism, White supremacy, and oppression

Intimate violence, racism, and oppression in the context of the United States

Individual anti-racism/oppression work and White allyship

Working against racism in our organizations and anti-violence movement

Working against racism in our communities and systems

Exploring solutions to violence outside of the criminal legal system

Moving towards liberation

Many thanks to the following people who contributed their time, expertise, and stories to these videos!

Vanessa Timmons - Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence; Pablo Espinoza & Lidia Salazar - Community United Against Violence (CUAV), Amita Swadhin - Mirror Memoirs, Kelly Miller - Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence, Maya Pilgrim - Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, Orchid Pusey - Asian Women's Shelter, Jose Juan Lara Jr. - Casa de Esperanza/National Latin@ Network, María Limón - University of Colorado, Denver, Zoe Flowers - Women of Color Network, Lisa Fujie Parks - Prevention Institute, Debra Ward - YWCA of San Gabriel Valley, and Amina White - University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

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Anti-Racism as Violence Prevention - Futures Without Violence

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These videos and discussion guides are intended to be used by domestic and sexual violence advocates and activists to spark conversations on the ways that racism and oppression have shaped our anti-violence movements and how we can dismantle racism in our organizations and communities. In these videos, you will hear from advocates and organizers who...

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Yes, We mean Literally Abolish The Police

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Yes, We mean Literally Abolish The Police

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Because reform won't happen.

By

Ms. Kaba is an organizer against criminalization.

Credit... Illustration by Nicholas Konrad; photograph by Getty Images

Congressional Democrats want to make it easier to identify and prosecute police misconduct; Joe Biden wants to give police departments $300 million. But efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century.

Enough. We can't reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police.

There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo.

So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man's neck until he dies, that's the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job.

Now two weeks of nationwide protests have led some to call for defunding the police, while others argue that doing so would make us less safe.

The first thing to point out is that police officers don't do what you think they do. They spend most of their time responding to noise complaints, issuing parking and traffic citations, and dealing with other noncriminal issues. We've been taught to think they "catch the bad guys; they chase the bank robbers; they find the serial killers," said Alex Vitale, the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, in an interview with Jacobin. But this is "a big myth," he said. "The vast majority of police officers make one felony arrest a year. If they make two, they're cop of the month."

We can't simply change their job descriptions to focus on the worst of the worst criminals. That's not what they are set up to do.

Second, a "safe" world is not one in which the police keep black and other marginalized people in check through threats of arrest, incarceration, violence and death.

I've been advocating the abolition of the police for years. Regardless of your view on police power - whether you want to get rid of the police or simply to make them less violent - here's an immediate demand we can all make: Cut the number of police in half and cut their budget in half. Fewer police officers equals fewer opportunities for them to brutalize and kill people. The idea is gaining traction in Minneapolis, Dallas, Los Angeles and other cities.

History is instructive, not because it offers us a blueprint for how to act in the present but because it can help us ask better questions for the future.

The Lexow Committee undertook the first major investigation into police misconduct in New York City in 1894. At the time, the most common complaint against the police was about "clubbing" - "the routine bludgeoning of citizens by patrolmen armed with nightsticks or blackjacks," as the historian Marilynn Johnson has written.

The Wickersham Commission, convened to study the criminal justice system and examine the problem of Prohibition enforcement, offered a scathing indictment in 1931, including evidence of brutal interrogation strategies. It put the blame on a lack of professionalism among the police.

After the 1967 urban uprisings, the Kerner Commission found that "police actions were 'final' incidents before the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders." Its report listed a now-familiar set of recommendations, like working to build "community support for law enforcement" and reviewing police operations "in the ghetto, to ensure proper conduct by police officers."

These commissions didn't stop the violence; they just served as a kind of counterinsurgent function each time police violence led to protests. Calls for similar reforms were trotted out in response to the brutal police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the rebellion that followed, and again after the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The final report of the Obama administration's President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing resulted in procedural tweaks like implicit-bias training, police-community listening sessions, slight alterations of use-of-force policies and systems to identify potentially problematic officers early on.

But even a member of the task force, Tracey Meares, noted in 2017, "policing as we know it must be abolished before it can be transformed."

The philosophy undergirding these reforms is that more rules will mean less violence. But police officers break rules all the time. Look what has happened over the past few weeks - police officers slashing tires, shoving old men on camera, and arresting and injuring journalists and protesters. These officers are not worried about repercussions any more than Daniel Pantaleo, the former New York City police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner's death; he waved to a camera filming the incident. He knew that the police union would back him up and he was right. He stayed on the job for five more years.

Minneapolis had instituted many of these "best practices" but failed to remove Derek Chauvin from the force despite 17 misconduct complaints over nearly two decades, culminating in the entire world watching as he knelt on George Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes.

Why on earth would we think the same reforms would work now? We need to change our demands. The surest way of reducing police violence is to reduce the power of the police, by cutting budgets and the number of officers.

But don't get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We don't want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.

We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place.

We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society. Trained "community care workers" could do mental-health checks if someone needs help. Towns could use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people in prison.

What about rape? The current approach hasn't ended it. In fact most rapists never see the inside of a courtroom. Two-thirds of people who experience sexual violence never report it to anyone. Those who file police reports are often dissatisfied with the response. Additionally, police officers themselves commit sexual assault alarmingly often. A study in 2010 found that sexual misconduct was the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct. In 2015, The Buffalo News found that an officer was caught for sexual misconduct every five days.

When people, especially white people, consider a world without the police, they envision a society as violent as our current one, merely without law enforcement - and they shudder. As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.

People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food and education for all? This change in society wouldn't happen immediately, but the protests show that many people are ready to embrace a different vision of safety and justice.

When the streets calm and people suggest once again that we hire more black police officers or create more civilian review boards, I hope that we remember all the times those efforts have failed.

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Opinion | Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police

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Because reform won't happen. By Ms. Kaba is an organizer against criminalization. Congressional Democrats want to make it easier to identify and prosecute police misconduct; Joe Biden wants to give police departments $300 million. But efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century.

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Toward Equity in Health: A New Global Approach to Health Disparities by Barbara C. Wallace https://www.springerpub.com/toward-equity-in-health-9780826103130.html

Introduction: The Forces Driving and Embodied Within a New Field of Equity in Health, Barbara C. Wallace

Lesbian and Bisexual Women of Color, Racism, Heterosexism, Homophobia, and Health: A Recommended Intervention and Research Agenda, Beverly Greene, Marie L. Miville, and Angela D. Ferguson

Strategies for Reducing Disparities in African Americans' Receipt and Use of Mental Health Services, Madonna G. Constantine, Mai M. Kindaichi, Sheila V. Graham, and Nicole L. Watkins

Toward Evidence-Based and Culturally Appropriate Models For Reducing Global Health Disparities: An Africanist Perspective, Collins O. Airhihenbuwa and Titilayo Okoror

Conclusion: The Future of the Field of Equity in Health, Barbara C. Wallace

Black Women in Politics: Demanding Citizenship, Challenging Power, and Seeking Justice by Julia S. Jordan-Zachery (Editor), Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd (Editor) https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6591-black-women-in-politics.aspx

Chapter 3 - The Politics of Black Women's Health in the UK: Intersections of "Race," Class, and Gender in Policy, Practice, and Research by Jenny Douglas

Chapter 11 - "We Always Resist: Trust Black Women": Black Women's Reproductive Justice Activism in the Wake of Health Care Reform by Tonya M. Williams

The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain by Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie, and Suzanne Scafe

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2694-the-heart-of-the-race

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950 By Susan L. Smith https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1797.html

Women, Health and Nation: Canada and the United States Since 1945 By Georgina D. Feldberg, Molly Ladd-Taylor, Alison Li : https://www.mqup.ca/women--health--and-nation-products-9780773525016.php

Chapter 12 - Karen Flynn's "Race, the State, and Caribbean Immigrant Nurses, 1950-1962"

Chapter 15 - Vanessa Northington Gamble's "Subcutaneous Scars: A Black Physician Shares What It Feels Like to Be on the Receiving End of Racial Prejudice, despite a Successful Career"

Black Disabled Women's Syllabusby Vilissa Thompson
*Titles that are italicized indicate books NOT written by Black women

Articles

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Black Feminist Perspectives on COVID-19: A Reading List - Black Women Radicals

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Toward Equity in Health: A New Global Approach to Health Disparities by Barbara C. Wallace https://www.springerpub.com/toward-equity-in-health-9780826103130.html Introduction: The Forces Driving and Embodied Within a New Field of Equity in Health, Barbara C. Wallace Lesbian and Bisexual Women of Color, Racism, Heterosexism, Homophobia, and Health: A Recommended Intervention and Research Agenda, Beverly Greene, Marie L.

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4 Grounding Skills You Can Do Right Now with Your Teen

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When depression and anxiety hit it can feel like you've been transported to another world or dimension where everything is skewed and you aren't present with your surroundings. You may feel numb, overwhelmed, checked out, or like you're just floating through life with little sense of what is going on around you.

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Shai Held: The staggering, heartless cruelty toward the elderly
For example, earlier this month, the medical-center leadership announced that they had developed special clinical protocols for children and adults with COVID-19. To my knowledge, protocols for elders, the most vulnerable group, still don't exist. This isn't a UCSF-specific practice; it's standard throughout the country. American medicine lumps elders in with adults, despite abundant evidence that drugs and diseases behave differently in older bodies. Additionally, health-screening procedures for visitors were put into place at our children's hospital at the start of March, while similar procedures weren't implemented for our adult hospital until two weeks later. You could argue that the children's hospital is smaller and thus easier to manage; you could also surmise that protecting adults and elders was less of a priority, despite the greater risk of hospitalization and death those groups face.

Transgressions like these are minor in the face of global calamity, but we're seeing similar decisions being made nationally. With each one, this country loses precious time to take the actions that will limit contagion and save the most lives, old and young: screening those at highest risk to limit spread; documenting the predictably different early symptoms in older people; and creating care pathways that offer options to patients for whom aggressive medical treatment would only prolong suffering and not prevent death.

Let me be perfectly clear: I'm not witnessing the actions of malicious, underperforming people. On the contrary, UCSF leadership has been heroic and selfless, working around the clock to provide the best care possible to those with COVID-19 while protecting other patients and staff. Ironically-no, tragically-that noble intent reveals just how entrenched and pervasive ageism is in American health care. It's baked into how the field approaches education, research, and the most fundamental procedures, structures, and policies.

Medical schools devote months to teaching students about child physiology and disease, and years to adults, but just weeks to elders; geriatrics doesn't even appear on the menu of required training. The National Institutes of Health mandated the inclusion of women and people of color in medical research in 1986, but it didn't issue a similar mandate for elders until 33 years later, in 2019. "The bias is so implicit, it goes unnoticed," one of my colleagues said of ageism in the American COVID-19 response and in medicine generally. But when you start to pay attention, you see it everywhere.
Read: How the pandemic will end
Take for example, the way my state tracks deaths from the flu, one of the most common and deadly infections. Even though older people are far more likely to die from it, until 2018, the California Department of Public Health counted flu deaths only for children and adults under 65. The main explanation given to the San Francisco Chronicle was that recording the far higher number of elder deaths would be too expensive and time-consuming. The problem is that when the impact of disease in a population is unknown, there's little incentive to develop treatments tailored to that group's needs. When the affected population is elders, the problem is especially bad: As we've already seen with the current crisis, many people say that elders are dying anyway and tend to blame old age itself for their deaths-not a flawed system.

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Shai Held: The staggering, heartless cruelty toward the elderly For example, earlier this month, the medical-center leadership announced that they had developed special clinical protocols for children and adults with COVID-19. To my knowledge, protocols for elders, the most vulnerable group, still don't exist. This isn't a UCSF-specific practice; it's standard throughout the country.

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What Is Mutual Aid, and How Can It Help With Coronavirus?

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Communities across the country are organizing to provide relief directly to people the government has failed.

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List of neighborhood specific mutual aid groups

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If you'd like to add a Chicago mutual aid organization to this list (either with requests for donations or volunteers), please email us.

Donate Your Funds

Before viewing the additional mutual aid funds below, please first visit the Chicago COVID-19 Mutual Aid Volunteer Sign-uppage that organizer Kelly Hayes created. This page takes your neighborhood and connects you to a local mutual aid project in your community. After filling this form out, an organizer will reach out with information on how you can donate. Many of the funds below cooperate with this sign-up page already, so we recommend starting there.

Neighborhood Mutual Aid Funds Other Mutual Aid Projects
Volunteer Your Time

Before viewing the additional volunteer opportunities below, please first visit the Chicago COVID-19 Mutual Aid Volunteer Sign-uppage that organizer Kelly Hayes created. This page takes your neighborhood and connects you to a local mutual aid project in your community. After filling this form out, an organizer will reach out with information on how you can volunteer. Many of the projects below cooperate with this sign-up page already, so we recommend starting there.

Resident Association of Greater Englewood is looking for volunteers to pack, sort, and deliver groceries. Email joinrage@gmail.com with interest.

Uptown and Buena Park Solidarity Network

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If you'd like to add a Chicago mutual aid organization to this list (either with requests for donations or volunteers), please email us. Donate Your Funds Before viewing the additional mutual aid funds below, please first visit the Chicago COVID-19 Mutual Aid Volunteer Sign-up page that organizer Kelly Hayes created.

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UPDATE: We have closed submissions to this fundraiser. For now, you can still choose a hardship and donate. We will be taking down the spreadsheet July 1, 2020. Many thanks to everyone who has donated.

The Chicago COVID-19 Hardship and Help page was created by Chicago organizers Kelly Hayes and Delia Galindo to offer a simple way for people in the Chicago area to ask others for assistance during this crisis. Whether you are a parent whose income has dried up, a struggling freelancer, or enduring any other financial strife during this crisis, please feel free to share your story and ask for whatever financial help you need. To post a request, you can fill out . We know not everyone will get the help they ask for, but we want people to have the opportunity to ask, and also the opportunity to help.

If you are financially secure and want to help someone whose livelihood has been impacted by this crisis, please pick a hardship to address and donate.

We ask that people use our update form to indicate when they have received assistance. Promptly indicating that your request has been fulfilled will allow someone else to get the assistance they need. It will take solidarity to make this thing work. We hope you will participate in that spirit.

This list is not vetted. We do not have the capacity to confirm everyone's stories nor do we wish to intrude on people's lives. Since we are not vetting these requests, there is a chance that someone will post an ask that is not framed honestly. We believe helping people during this difficult time is worth the risk.

We are not facilitating the fulfillment of any of these requests. We are simply creating a platform to allow people who have unmet needs to connect with people who have resources. We hope you find this platform helpful.

Note: As of this update (4/16/2020), over $69,000 in aid has been distributed. There are over 4,000 hardships currently listed.

Request form Update form (when your need has been met)

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UPDATE: We have closed submissions to this fundraiser. For now, you can still choose a hardship and donate. We will be taking down the spreadsheet July 1, 2020. Many thanks to everyone who has donated. The Chicago COVID-19 Hardship and Help page was created by Chicago organizers Kelly Hayes and Delia Galindo to offer a...

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Each Mutual Aid Program sub-group is part support group and part actionable community outreach and empowerment!

Our Mutual Aid Program is a 8 month long program with a suite of subprograms designed to promote access, resources, justice and health within our communities by providing people with the tools and skills they need to create community oriented solutions for the barriers they face in their everyday lives. All programming, services, and resources are intended for Black and brown people.

These mutual aid groups are part of Brave Space Alliance's VAMP (HIV AIDS Manifesting Prevention) program. VAMP is an innovative program aimed at reducing or eliminating new HIV infections among Black and Brown transgender and gender-nonconforming people in Chicago, IL. The philosophy of VAMP is that if we help our communities improve all parts of our lives, our health will improve as well. These mutual aid groups are the pilot program of VAMP; each group will have an initial cohort of no more than 15 participants.

Sex Worker Safety & Advocacy Group - Our Sex Worker Mutual Aid and Advocacy Group pursues a harm reduction and HIV prevention strategy, allowing participants to share skills related to safety, condom use, reducing one's HIV risk, knowing one's rights, and support for participants who want to exit sex work. For more information please contact Parresse Edwards & Lynzo.

Financial and Housing Stability Group - BSA's Housing Insecurity Mutual Aid Groups builds on our successful Homelessness Prevention counseling to link participants with safe and stable housing. For more information please contact Julian Hendrix.

Food Insecurity Group - BSA is partnering with Chi City Foods LLC, which builds fresh produce networks in urban food deserts, to teach participants how to access existing food networks or create new ones, and to teach participants healthy cooking skills, so that we can address health and food insecurity in our community. For more information please contact Basil.

We are currently seeking program participants for each mutual aid program group. If you are interested and would like to sign up please complete this form.

For more information about our Mutual Aid Program please send all inquiries to our Program Coordinator, Tatyana Chante.

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Mutual Aid Program - Brave Space Alliance

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Our Mutual Aid Program is a 8 month long program with a suite of subprograms designed to promote access, resources, justice and health within our communities by providing people with the tools and skills they need to create community oriented solutions for the barriers they face in their everyday lives.

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Call 888-293-2080 in Chicago Metropolitan Area
Call 630-971-3927 in DuPage County
Call 708-748-5672 in the South Suburbs

Operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the Rape Crisis Hotlines provides survivors of sexual violence and their significant others immediate support, crisis intervention and referrals for the city of Chicago and surrounding suburbs. The volunteers and staff at the hotline have received extensive training in sexual assault crisis intervention.

The Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline is also the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) affiliate for the city of Chicago.

Where:

Chicago and suburbs

Who's Eligible:

Anyone. There is no typical rape survivor-women, men, and children from all walks of life can be victims of a sexual assault.

Costs:

Free

Contact:

888-293-2080 in Chicago Metropolitan Area

630-971-3927 in DuPage County

708-748-5672 in the South Suburbs

Interested in volunteering for the hotline? Click here for more information.

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Rape Crisis Hotline - YWCA Metropolitan Chicago

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Call 888-293-2080 in Chicago Metropolitan Area Call 630-971-3927 in DuPage County Call 708-748-5672 in the South Suburbs Operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the Rape Crisis Hotlines provides survivors of sexual violence and their significant others immediate support, crisis intervention and referrals for the city of Chicago and surrounding suburbs.

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Teen Voices series on digital citizenship

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Teen Voices: Oversharing and Your Digital Footprint

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Video resources for educators and young people alike on various topics around healthy relationships, child sexual abuse, personal safety, etc.

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We've updated our web site!

Click on a language button or your country to view options. After visiting your language / country page our website will remember your preference when you return.
What's New

CLOSE

We use cookies to ensure that we give the best experience on our web site. You may configure your browser to refuse cookies although some features might not work properly. Read more in our Terms & Privacy.

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AMAZE - Age appropriate puberty and sex education videos

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AMAZE takes the awkward out of sex ed and growing up. Real info in fun, animated sex education videos that give you the answers you actually want to know.

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High School Reading List - Gender Identity

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High School Reading List - Gender Identity

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High School Reading List- Gender Identity, Expressions & Sexuality

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sYou are not alone. Help is available.

Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline
877-863-6338 (877-TO END DV)
Our DV Hotline provides crisis safety planning and referrals to emergency housing and support services to victims of domestic violence in Illinois. In addition, Victim Information Resource Advocates can provide information and local resources to concerned family and friends.

The Hotline is funded through a collaborative funding model with the City of Chicago's Department of Family and Support Services.

The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence established an Emergency Crisis Fund for survivors of Domestic Violence to address critical gaps in the safety net for survivors. We intend to maintain this funding as a support for survivors across our communities.

The Fund will prioritize supports for survivors where no other funding is applicable. Examples of supports include, but are not limited to: one months rental assistance, educational and social supports for e-learning for clients in shelter or community emergency housing, diapers, basic necessities, supports for incarcerated survivors, emergency bill payments to remain in housing, or transportation. Other requests will be considered.

If you or a survivor is in need of emergency funding due to domestic violence you can submit the application below via email to Emergency@The-Network.org or mail to Luz Magdaleno Flores, 1 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1630, Chicago, IL 60601 or fax: (312)527-0733

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sYou are not alone. Help is available. 877-863-6338 (877-TO END DV) Our DV Hotline provides crisis safety planning and referrals to emergency housing and support services to victims of domestic violence in Illinois. In addition, Victim Information Resource Advocates can provide information and local resources to concerned family and friends.

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Teen Dating Violence - How to Talk with Teens

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Teen Dating Violence - How to Talk with Teens

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Welcome to one of the most challenging phases of parenting-adolescence.

In all likelihood, your young teen is experiencing significant emotional, psychological and physical changes. And, while your teen needs you more than ever to help them through this challenging time, they are also seeking independence and turning to peers. While it may seem easier to let your teen shake you loose, hang on. They really do need you.

Right now, your teen is forming relationships that set the stage for future relationships. Given that 1 in 5 high schoolers experience dating violence, you'll want to be sure you do your part to help your child understand what a healthy relationship feels and looks like. Below you'll find information and tools to help you talk to your kids about healthy relationships, guidelines on how to navigate their world of cell phones and social networking and how to talk to your kids about being an upstander vs. a bystander when it comes to bullying.

Starting the Conversation Early

G If you suspect your teen may be a victim of abuse, you are the most important resource and advisor for your child. If you need support there are people and resources available to help. Remind your teen that he or she deserves a violence free relationship and that abuse is NEVER appropriate and NEVER their fault.

If you think your son or daughter may be controlling, abusive, or violent with his or her partner, tell your child that abuse and violence are NOT acceptable and that violence will not solve problems. Let him or her know when you truly care for someone you don't hurt them or try to control them. Abuse is a choice and there are resources and counselors that can help him or her understand the consequences, the alternatives to violence, and how to stop the abuse.

If your teen isn't ready to openly communicate with you about his or her relationship, let him or her know there are confidential resources and trained individuals available to answer questions and help avoid unhealthy relationships. Pass on the information below, but let your teen know you are always available to talk.
If at any time you feel that you or your teen are in immediate danger, call 911.

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How to Talk to Teens About Dating Violence - Futures Without Violence

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Welcome to one of the most challenging phases of parenting-adolescence. In all likelihood, your young teen is experiencing significant emotional, psychological and physical changes. And, while your teen needs you more than ever to help them through this challenging time, they are also seeking independence and turning to peers.

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*This website lists to call 911, however, studies show that calling the police can increase the chance of intimate partner homicide. Talk with young people about outlining 5 safe adults and safety planning. Calling 911 should be a last resort.

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COVID-19 Task Force on Domestic Violence

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+ Safety Planning with Children

What is a safety plan?

"A safety plan is a personalized, practical plan that includes ways to remain safe while in a relationship, planning to leave, or after you leave." Click here for more information on safety planning. (National Domestic Violence Hotline)

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For Parents & Teens - COVID-19 Task Force on Domestic Violence

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"A safety plan is a personalized, practical plan that includes ways to remain safe while in a relationship, planning to leave, or after you leave." Click here for more information on safety planning. (National Domestic Violence Hotline)