About

Women with intellectual disability often don’t get support which works for them

• There are barriers for women with disability in accessing mainstream DFV services (Robinson et al., 2021).
• There are barriers for women with intellectual disability in reporting sexual violence (Fraser-Barbour et al., 2018).

Women with intellectual disability often don’t get asked about what would help 

• Due to stereotypes and assumptions made about people with intellectual disability, many people with intellectual disability are left out of conversations about them and their needs.

We wanted to change that!

What did we aim to do?

• Run workshops with women with intellectual disability (ID), to share rights-based information about sexual violence, domestic and family violence and other forms of disability-related violence.
• Create resources for workers about how they could be more accessible when working alongside women with an ID, who have experienced violence.
• Challenge some of the assumptions made by workers and community members about women with ID. We wanted to showcase women with ID as leaders, contributors, teachers and experts in this field.

What did we do?

We held workshops in Brisbane, Logan, Gold Coast, Rockhampton and Caboolture about rights, violence and how to seek support. We also asked participants what makes accessible services for them after an experience of violence and what kind of resource we should make to share their ideas.

Here’s the process of how the podcast was created.

The above image’s process illustrates:

1. Recruitment of Peer Workers
2. Development of Workshop Content
3. Psychoeducation Workshops & Consultation
4. Podcast Recording
5. Individual Consultations
6. Consultation Workshops
7. Podcast Review Workshops & Individual Sessions
8. Podcast Feedback Focus Groups with Services
9. Podcast Release!

What did we learn?

So much!

You can find out what makes accessible services for women with ID after an experience of violence by looking at our podcast, booklet and posters, available on this site. All of these resources were created from consultations with our experts.

For information on whether we met our aims and how effective the project was, have a look at our Evaluation Report.

Please contact WWILD Sexual Violence Prevention Association Inc. if you’d like more information. See our Contact Page.

Thank you for your support

We had a lot of help from a lot of people. We would like to thank everyone that helped us with this project. Many services let us use their rooms. Many people gave us lots of good advice. Many people shared their cultural wisdom with us. We want to thank each and every one of them for their help. We couldn’t have done it without you!

We would also like to acknowledge the many disability advocates and survivors of violence that have done this work before us. We want to thank all of them for sharing their lived experience expertise! We could not have done this project without building on the knowledge of so many before us.

Please note: This project initially focused exclusively on women with intellectual disability but was later changed to include non-binary people as well. This page was created early in the project and therefore, only refers to women. 

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2021). Disability and Violence – in Focus: Crime and Justice Statistics, Australian Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved March 2, 2022 from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/focus-crime-and-justicestatistics/april-2021.

Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC). (2010). Family Violence — A National Legal Response. ALRC Final Report, 114.

Fraser-Barbour, E.F., Crocker, R. and Walker, R. (2018). Barriers and facilitators in supporting people with intellectual disability to report sexual violence: perspectives of Australian disability and mainstream support providers. The Journal of Adult Protection, 20 (1).

OurWatch. (2022). Changing the landscape: A national resource to prevent violence against women and girls with disabilities.

Robinson S, Frawley P, Dyson S. (2021). Access and Accessibility in Domestic and Family Violence Services for Women with Disabilities: Widening the Lens. Violence Against Women. 27 (6-7)